Archive of Our Own ^beta

Joel buries Sarah himself. Tommy tries, just once, to take the shovel, and gets an arm to the gut that leaves him wheezing. 

Joel doesn’t even look at him before he’s back to digging. 

Sarah is laid on a blanket on the ground and wrapped in another because Joel, in a way that fucking gutted him, said “She’ll get cold,” before he picked up a shovel and started digging. He can see Joel’s arms shaking. He’s a strong man, his brother, but he’s also been through more in a night than any one person is really meant to survive, and one hesitant venture that it was deep enough was met with a “No fucking scavenger’s gonna get her,” so he keeps his peace after that and lets his brother dig like he’s sinking the shovel into the soldier who shot his baby. 

Finally, whether he’s content with the depth or just too fucking exhausted to continue, he stands up. The hole is up to his shoulders, and Tommy’s honestly pretty impressed. 

It’s a little muted beneath the grief and horror, though. 

He picks up his niece gently and tries his best not to react to the way he can feel her body going stiff. He held this little girl the day she was born, saw those pretty eyes blinking up at him like “Who the hell are you?” in a scrunched newborn face. He and Joel are similar builds, and he’d done his time as a substitute holding her so Joel could do things like eat and take a shower without setting her off into screaming. 

She’d been a daddy’s girl, even back then, and had fussed up a storm if anyone took her away from him.

He chokes, at that idea.

Someone did take her away from him, and this time there’s no scream, no kicky-leg fit. There’s just a too-young face, still and already pale in death. 

He hands her off to Joel with the same gentleness he passed her over as a newborn, and his brother almost crumples beneath the weight, going to his knees and holding her like the baby she will always be to him, close to his chest and rocking her. The way he sobs hurts to hear, and he knows already there aren’t any words in the goddamn world to touch a pain like this. 

He pulls his brother up out of the hole and prepares to step back for Joel to finish it, but Joel gets one fistful of dirt and freezes. 

“Joel?” He ventures, when his brother doesn’t move. 

“I-I can’t do it,” he says hoarsely, swallowing hard. “I can’t, Tommy, I-” can’t bury my girl, he hears Joel think but not say.

“I’ve got it,” he says softly, prying at his brother’s fingers until the dirt comes loose, catching it in his palm so Joel won’t have to see his daughter’s face covered in dirt from his hands. “Take a breather, big brother. I’ve got this part.” 

Joel staggers like a drunk man away from the hole, and then he falls on his ass, leans forward to rest his head in his hands, and cries. 

He buries his niece on his own, saving her face for the last possible moment because he can’t stand to see her as a faceless body. It’s a macabre reminder of the times he’s babysat her over the years, tucking her in under a blanket when she finally fell asleep far past her bedtime because Uncle Tommy Time is all about breaking (benign) rules. 

Sweet dreams, little missy, he thinks, for the very last time, before he has to cover her face, sprinkling the soil down gently with the illogical urge to not hurt her. 

When it’s all said and done, the little mound of dirt seems too small to contain everything Sarah was. The little pile doesn’t contain her smile or her sass or her soccer trophies or her sixth sense for what exactly will make Joel laugh. It doesn’t fit her love of butterflies or her hatred of flip flops or the candy bars they snuck after Joel told them both not to ruin Sarah’s appetite before supper and they ignored him while he pretended not to notice. 

It fits her body, her still, quiet little body, and that’s all. 

*

He stays awake as long as he can, worried about Joel, who seems nearly catatonic. They haven’t left Sarah’s grave, even though he knows they need to. This isn’t a world they can be still in. There are things to do, plans to make, supplies to gather. 

But he also can’t tear his brother away from his baby girl’s grave. 

Still, a body keeps score, and he more passes out than he sleeps, not even laying down, propped in the driver’s side seat of the truck they’d stolen. 

He wakes to the sound of a gunshot. 

*

The immediate aftermath of his big brother trying to shoot himself in the goddamned head is a blur. He’s a veteran. He’s lost friends to war and to the almost-peace of being back from it. He knows the way a man’s mind can fracture. 

But still, at the heart of him, he’s the kid whose big brother always seemed larger than life. 

He thinks he talks to Joel while he packs him up in the truck and gets him to a medical unit as fast as he can. Then Joel’s gone, surrounded by doctors, and he’s left to sit and shake and get himself together until a nurse calls “Thomas Miller?” and he’s led over to Joel, head wrapped in bandages, eyes closed. 

Abruptly, the fear is gone. 

Fierce rage takes its place. 

"You listen to me, you stupid fucker," he all but growls. His hands are on Joel's shoulders, and if he wasn't on his back on a hospital cot, he'd be shaking him until some fucking sense rattled loose. "You lost your girl," Joel makes a pained noise at this and grips his bicep in return. "But you are still fucking here. I am still fucking here. And we go on for family, you hear me? Don’t you ever pull that shit on me again. You got it?"

After a long, long moment, Joel nods. 

*

He meant it, what he said in that hospital tent. We go on because we've got people who need us to, no matter how much it hurts. 

But being alive and living ain't the same thing.

It's painful, to watch the shadow his brother becomes, all ferocity and anger, none of the softness.

He buried that with Sarah, put all of that gentleness and humor and care in the same hole he put his daughter in.

Perhaps that's really why Tommy leaves in the end.

He just can’t stand to look at the wreck the world’s made of his brother anymore. 

*

He knows from the moment he sees Joel helping the girl down from the horse she’s on that something’s up. There’s an ease to the movement that says he almost certainly helped her up on the horse as well, and the way she moves with absolute trust that he won’t let her fall says there’s a bond there that’s had time to develop. 

The girl sticks close to Joel’s side, eyes wary, as he guides her back over. 

“This is Ellie,” Joel says before turning to her. “This is my brother, T-” 

“Tommy, yeah. I heard. Not all of us have shit ears, grandpa.” 

He blinks at the comment, but Joel doesn’t seem offended, even as he rolls his eyes. 

This is his second hint. 

*

It’s when he watches Joel move around her that the full depth of what’s happened sinks in. Ellie takes point, interested in exploring a new situation the way all kids are, but Joel sticks to the back, observing everything without being front and center in it. 

And keeping Ellie in sight at all times. 

It makes him catch his breath for a moment when he first sees it and recognizes what he’s doing. 

He knows this routine. 

He used to tease Joel about being a dad-ellite around Planet Sarah with how he acted in public, an orbit around his girl. He was never a child leash parent, always encouraging Sarah’s independence, but he had always kept an eye out, keeping her and everything around her in sight. 

Just like he’s doing with Ellie. 

*

“Ellie, let’s mind our manners,” Joel says, and God, he sounds so much like a dad again that Tommy just can’t help but smile. It’s like seeing an old friend he’d thought he’d never meet again, this version of his brother. This better version of him. 

It doesn’t pull Ellie back to toe the line because he gets the sense she’s a kid used to a firmer hand than some chiding words, but the exasperation in the “Ellie!” she gets just makes him smile wider. There’s no aggression there, no threat of violence because she didn’t listen. 

There’s just a parent reprimanding a child for her mouth, a little embarrassed that she’s showing out in front of company. 

A parent who hasn’t done such a thing in twenty fucking years. 

*

It figures that of every fucking child his brother could have picked up as a stray and decided to start healing for, he would pick the single one immune to infection, the one who could be gone in a single moment if anyone sees the bite marks on her arm that mark her out as special. Of course he couldn’t go for an orphan child not at active risk of dying. Couldn’t just pick one out of a litter without a death sentence hanging over her. 

Because God forbid Joel do one easy thing in his goddamn life. 

It’s worse that he can’t even be properly pissed about Joel asking him to take her. He hasn’t seen his brother cry since the night Sarah died, had thought he might have shut that part of himself away forever. He hasn’t seen his brother touch anyone else carefully, the way he did helping Ellie off the horse. He hasn’t seen Joel care enough to scold someone for poor table manners. 

He hasn’t seen him let in another person who could rip him hollow if anything happened to her. 

He sees that scar on his brother’s temple and knows he’s about to agree even before he opens his mouth. 

We go on for family, and God help them all, but his brother picked this little girl to be part of theirs. 

God, he can be a pain in the ass. 

*

He sends Joel and Ellie off with mixed emotions. Ellie tossing her bag to Joel is the most emotion he’s seen from her all morning, and he sees the relief on his brother’s face at the easy forgiveness, at the immediacy with which she makes her decision. 

With how clearly she wants him and only him. 

Joel helps Ellie up onto the horse with the same care he helped her down with, and again, that same warmth in his chest at seeing his brother doing the thing it seems like he was born to do. Joel’s fears of inadequacy aside, he knows just watching them that Joel will die before he ever lets anything happen to this girl. He’s hers, it’s plain as day, and with a little time, she’s going to have him wrapped around her little finger the same way Sarah always did. He doesn’t think they’ve realized it yet, doesn’t know if they will, honestly, both of them seem so stubborn, but he sees exactly what they are. 

All he can hope is that they get back so he can see more. 

*

Joel returns to the gates of Jackson in a hotwired car with a box of medical supplies, a few dozen doses of a vaccine, and a pale, thin, unconscious Ellie in the backseat, tucked beneath two blankets and wearing Joel’s jacket like a cape. She doesn’t even move when Joel picks her up like she’s made of porcelain, and Tommy steps forward to tuck her head up when it starts to loll. He blinks when he sees Joel press a kiss to her forehead. 

Well damn, looks like they made a little progress after all. 

One little arm falls from the blanket Joel has her bundled in, and he catches his breath when he sees the bruises on the pale skin. He tucks it up back into the blanket and pulls it tighter around her shoulders because she’s cool to the touch, and he gives Joel a concerned look. 

“The hell happened to her?” He asks. 

“Fucking Fireflies,” Joel says darkly, but the grip he has on Ellie is gentle. He jerks his head to the bag of vaccine vials. “She went through hell to make that happen.” 

There’s more he could ask, more he could poke at, but Ellie isn’t the only one who looks exhausted. 

There’ll be time enough to grill Joel for answers later. 

*

He follows Joel to the house that’s been kept ready at his insistence for his brother and Ellie. He follows Joel up to the room Ellie stayed in last time, and he pulls back the sheets so Joel can settle her on the mattress. He nearly feels the need to look away watching Joel settle her in, it’s so tender, so achingly loving. He sends Tommy off for a first aid kit, and when he comes back, Joel’s gotten her shoes off and her hair out of its ponytail so it spreads in a dark sheet over her pillow. He cleans a massive bloody injury on her arm, and he must feel Tommy’s horror at the sight, because he speaks, voice low even though Ellie’s sleeping like nothing’s gonna wake her. 

“She doesn’t do well with anesthesia. Nurse wasn’t watching her close enough when a doctor was talking to me, and she ripped her IV out the second she woke up. Bled on about everything in her room. Fucking idiots.” Joel’s voice is dark, dangerous, and for a moment, he wonders if there are any Fireflies left if they’ve made him this mad. Gently, Joel turns Ellie to her side and lifts up her shirt–a scrub top, he notes–just enough to reveal more dark bruising at the bottom of her back. He gently wipes some alcohol over a pair of small puncture wounds like what a needle would leave behind, and just the image of a massive needle going into Ellie’s spine makes him feel a little sick, she’s so damn small. When Joel speaks again, he can tell it’s mostly to himself. “She has marks on her hips, too, but she can get those when she wakes up.” 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, unable to help himself, and Joel huffs a laugh without humor. “The fuck did they do to her?” 

“Whatever they felt like,” Joel says darkly, but he still moves Ellie back to her back with infinite gentleness, brushing her hair back and leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “Dream something good,” he says quietly enough that Tommy knows it wasn’t really meant for him to hear. 

Joel stands and tucks the covers up over Ellie, pressing one hand on the top of her head before he leaves her side. He nods to the door. 

“C’mon,” he says, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s talk.”

*

Their talk, as it turns out, is more Joel strong-arming him into accepting a dose of the vaccine before he’ll give up the location of where they can collect more in spring, council decisions be damned. 

“Would insist on Maria, too,” he says, “but don’t know if it might hurt the baby.”

He’s touched, even if he knows the rest of the council won’t be, and he accepts his dose from the clinic worker who comes by to collect the rest of the vaccine. Joel’s shoulders visibly lose tension once the dose is administered, and he’s tempted to tease him for being a big old softie. 

“I’ll tell you the rest after Maria’s had her dose after the baby,” Joel tells the clinic worker after, who is not pleased that he only gave over half the route. “Or,” he says threateningly, “I can tell you nothing, and you can go fuck yourself.” 

That ends the fight rather abruptly. 

“Not very one for all of you,” he says lightly once the clinic worker is gone, and Joel snorts. 

“You’re the communist here, not me,” he says, laughing when Tommy throws a pillow from the couch at his head. 

“Not a damn commie,” he mutters to himself, but Joel’s still grinning in a way he hasn’t seen in decades, so it’s hard to maintain the annoyance. 

(Mostly.)

*

He doesn’t see much of Joel after that. Ellie is still in a bad way, and though Sarah was always healthy as a horse, he remembers how dedicated Joel was to her when she didn’t feel well. His job by nature meant he couldn’t always stay with her during the day, but any moment he had, he was with Sarah, letting her curl up against him and control the remote to watch whatever she wanted. 

It’s not surprising, then, that Joel sticks by Ellie the same way, especially after what he gathers was a pretty traumatic time in the hospital, even though Joel’s been fairly tight-lipped about the details. Even when they do eventually venture out, Ellie sticks to Joel like a shadow. She talks to other people, of course, but she mainly stays close to Joel, following his lead. 

At first, he doesn't think anything of the way Ellie pulls Joel away at most events. She’s a kid who went through hell and is still recovering. She needs Joel, and he likes to be needed, and so he sits back and waves goodbye as his brother gets pulled away early from gatherings or after supper, even when they’re in the middle of talking or a card game. 

It’s not until “I don’t feel good” becomes “I’m tired” and eventually “Can we go home?” that he gets suspicious. 

Ellie’s subtle about it, to her credit. She doesn’t always do it at the same time, and she always follows it by laying her head on Joel’s shoulder or against his arm, leaning into the touch when he raises a hand to press it to her forehead or just to stroke over her hair. She doesn’t push, either, just says it and then waits, trusting that Joel will give in to what she wants. And Joel, with his fatal flaw of being easily wrapped around little fingers, always does. 

Then one day he realizes Ellie isn’t just patiently waiting. 

She’s looking at him, clearly looking for a reaction. She’s not direct about it, always watching from the corner of her eye or from under her lashes, but her requests are always followed with a look to him, not Joel, and he’s puzzled up until the day a yawn and a “I’m tired” gets her picked up, and he catches her eye over Joel’s shoulder that it clicks. 

He picked me, that look says, a brief little challenge, and then she’s gone as Joel goes through the door. 

He’s amused, really, more than anything else. It reminds him of when Sarah was little and Joel brought home the couple of women who were actually serious enough to get to the “meeting my kid” part of dating. She had given those two absolute hell in the most subtle way a small child is capable of, making the “He’s mine and you can’t take him” absolutely clear. Even years later, he’d thought about the one who had ended up with a purse full of pudding because Sarah saw her kiss Joel on the cheek. 

Needless to say, Joel hadn’t gotten another date after that. 

Sarah had grown out of it with time, and by the time she was twelve, she was already teasing Joel about being his wingwoman. But Sarah was also the beloved only child of a devoted father with no reason to doubt her place. 

Ellie is a kid who was raised as a child soldier until a different group of adults decided there was a better cause for her to risk her life for. It’s no small wonder she’s attached to Joel, who seems to have been her lifeline in both getting across the country and her single advocate in a hospital in which she was a test subject and not a kid. She’s also had one on one time with him for the whole journey, with no one trying to interrupt their time together. 

Now, though, she’s making a point with him, setting down a flag on exactly where they both stand. 

She also happens to be winning, pretty completely. 

Daddy's girl, he always thinks at her back as they leave, even if he never says it.

Their little rivalry aside, he’s not looking to deploy a nuclear bomb like that just yet. 

*

He tries to set aside their little power struggle with an invitation to take her hunting. He’s a little nervous about arming her around him, but he doesn’t think she’ll go quite that far. 

(He hopes.)

She’s not happy about being out with him, but he had deliberately asked around Joel so he would go, “That sounds like fun,” because one thing he’s learned is that more than anything, Ellie wants to please Joel. 

So if he says an outing with him while hunting sounds fun, Ellie will agree to it. 

Even if she clearly disagrees. 

"I get the feeling you don't like me very much,” he offers as an opener, holding back a branch for her. They’re about five minutes out of town and no one else is around, so it’s a safe time to open a conversation that will probably get a little prickly. 

(Besides, he’d rather get the rough parts out of the way before she has a loaded gun in her hands.) 

(Just in case.)

"I don't feel anything about you at all. You’re not important enough," Ellie says with a deliberately casual raise of one shoulder as she hops off the path to go fully around the tree rather than past the branch. 

Ouch. 

“Well it seems we’ve got some tension between us, you and me,” he continues, ducking when she holds back a branch only to let it go when he’s in range to get thwapped by it. 

“From what?” She asks, sounding bored. “It’s not like we hang out.” 

“From the way you about grind your molars down when I’m around my brother.” 

That makes her pause, just the slightest bit. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, but there’s an edge to her voice that says she absolutely does. “You sound fucking crazy, man.” 

“So the little getting him to leave routine you like to pull every night is just a hobby?” 

“Not my fault if he wants to hang out with me more,” Ellie says, before she jogs ahead enough to make conversation difficult. 

Shaking his head, he follows. 

He trails her until they’re at a point game’s been by recently, and then they both lay down behind some bushes as a hide. She’s clearly not pleased to be close to him, but he knows she wants to bring home something to impress Joel with, so she’s willing at least to play along for that if nothing else. He lets them both settle before he tries again, keeping his voice low. 

“Joel tell you I was in the army?” He asks. 

“Maybe,” she offers, scoping through her gun in a way that seems more about not looking at him than about looking for any prey. 

“I know a thing or two about wars that don’t leave you.” 

He gets a look at that, just from the corner of her eye. 

“I haven’t been in any wars,” she says flatly. “FEDRA’s fucked, but not that fucked.” 

He shrugs. 

“Seems to me you fought like hell to get that vaccine out into the world. Seen some things you shouldn’t have had to. Done some things you shouldn’t have had to.” 

“I’m not sorry about it,” she says at once, and she fully looks to him at that, defiant. “If you’re about to ‘oh poor baby’ me, I’m gonna punch you in the fucking face. I knew what I was doing, and I did it.” 

He doesn’t think she fully knew what she was doing, not really. She’s a kid, and he knows better than most how the Fireflies work. They like teenagers for a reason. They’re easy to convince, especially the FEDRA orphans. Already primed to want to belong, starved for someone to make them feel important. Ellie doesn’t seem like a follower and he imagines she’d be a tough one to crack, but she’s still a kid with an ability no one else in the world has. 

Not hard to make her feel special with something like that. 

“I don’t doubt it,” he says instead of any of the rest. She’s not someone who wants to be pitied, he knows that by how he never saw her when she was really weak. He’d gone over a couple of times to drop off food, and she’d about worried Joel to death hopping up on her feet if she was on the couch with him, clearly not wanting to look weak in front of someone she didn’t trust. She’d swayed and only stayed up with Joel’s support, but she’d managed it. 

He doesn’t think there’s much she can’t do, if she has her heart set on it. 

Including pulling his brother as close as she can get him to make sure she doesn’t lose him to anyone else she fears could take him. 

“I’m not like you,” she says with a toss of her ponytail. “Whine all you want about what you’ve done, but I don’t regret the things I had to do. Me and Joel saved the goddamn world.” 

He knows a lie when he hears it, but he thinks she might be lying to herself more than she’s lying to him. He sees the way she is with food, the way she sometimes only eats after she watches Joel do it first, and the way she always tugs at her too-big clothes to make them cover her better, the way she flinches if anyone brushes against her when she isn’t expecting it, the way she tucks herself under Joel’s arm to make him enforce her personal space in crowds by sharing his. 

He doesn’t know what happened to her and to Joel after they left, hasn’t earned the right to that information (at least not yet), but she’s different enough to what he saw of her before that he knows the world took a blow at her that must have knocked her right down, and that she’s still stumbling to pick herself back up after. 

No matter her words, he knows a thing or two about hurts you’d give anything to undo. 

He also knows that you can’t, no matter how much you might wish it. 

“Seems like it took a lot, doing that,” he says, looking through his own scope to let her look at him as much as she wants, trying to get a read on him. She does that, he’s noticed, watches people for their reactions and adjusts herself accordingly, intent and focused until she’s worked out what’s expected of her and whether or not it benefits her to go along with it. 

For now, all he wants of her is to listen. 

“I know you don’t believe this yet, but I’m not your enemy,” he says. “Joel wouldn’t-” 

“I know what Joel would and wouldn’t want,” she cuts him off. “I’m not the one who chose to leave him.” 

Well, she knows how to aim for where it’ll hurt for sure. 

“I’m glad he has you,” he offers, and when he looks to her briefly, he’s amused to see he’s thrown her with that one, her eyes narrowed like she’s searching for a trick. “He’s better with you, better than I’ve seen him in years.” 

He considers telling her that she holds Joel’s entire heart in those little hands of hers, but if she doesn’t know already, she will with time, and that’s probably something best left for her to discover on her own. 

“I don’t want to take him from you, Ellie. We’re not competing. I know he’s yours in a way he isn’t mine, and I’m glad for that. I’m just asking you to work with me a little here. I’m not trying to take him, but I would like to borrow him now and then.” He smiles, just slightly. “You can send him my way when you want to do rebellious teenager things. I’ll keep him busy for ya.” 

Ellie doesn’t respond, and their conversation fizzles out, but he can tell she’s thinking about what he’s said. 

It’ll have to be enough for now. 

*

He and Ellie haven’t had another conversation–although she had thanked him after they went hunting for helping her drag back the elk she proudly presented to Joel, which is probably a form of progress–when he looks out the window one day to find her and Joel on their back porch sitting on the swinging bench together, a guitar across both their laps. He pauses from where he’s dusting the window casing for the third time that week (because Maria’s nesting has ramped into full steam, and it’s in his best interests for survival to do as he’s told) and watches them. 

Sarah was never really into guitar, too busy with her other interests to set aside time to practice, but Ellie seems interested, although whether it’s more for her or Joel is debatable. He smiles, a bit, seeing her small hands struggling to reach all the chords, but Joel’s a patient teacher, putting his arms around her to show her the exact right way to strum and press the strings. 

This is the Joel he wishes Maria saw more, the same brother he had until the world took his child from him: the man who will pick up a gun without hesitation to protect what’s his, but who will also put it down the moment he can to guide little hands on a guitar to play what looks like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star over and over with no sign that he’s getting impatient. It’s clear from Joel’s face that he’s perfectly content with life at present, even when Ellie apparently decides she’d rather just strum for a while and shifts to let him press chords for her. 

They’re in their own little world, the two of them, the same way Joel and Sarah were. It’s the same perfect togetherness, the same closed circle of contentment with each other’s company. It’s the sort of thing he looks at and hopes he can achieve with his own child. 

And even if he never gets an uninterrupted poker game with his brother again, well. 

He can still get a peek at him now and then and see exactly what the sacrifice is for. 

*

The knock on the door comes at such a late hour that he greets it with gun in hand, leaving an armed Maria upstairs. In the walls of the town, he knows they’re safe, but this late at night, he’s not at full thinking capacity, and his heavily pregnant partner is sleep-rumpled and unwieldy, which makes him feel a little more caveman than he might be otherwise. 

When he answers the door, however, it’s just Joel, harried-looking but not otherwise setting off alarm bells. 

“Sorry,” Joel says, as he leads him back to his house. He calls up to Maria that he’s going over and knows from the sound that she’s flopped over to go back to sleep. “I wouldn’t bother you, but the Koys’ toddler managed to somehow get a pipe loose that’s flooding their basement. I said I’d go help, but I didn’t want to leave Ellie alone in the house.” 

“I could go check it out,” he offers, and Joel gives him a look. 

“I remember your plumbing attempts. I’d rather not give them more problems.” 

He punches Joel on the arm at that, but he still follows him into his house while Joel grabs his toolbag. 

“She’s asleep and hopefully she won’t wake up before I’m back,” the look he gives upstairs says he’s more than a little concerned that she will. “I just don’t want her to wake up in an empty house.” 

“You couldn’t wake her up just to tell her?” He doesn’t mind, even if it’s the middle of the night, but that would seem easier than going to get him. 

“It’s been a bad week for her,” Joel says, checking his tools and not looking at him, the words absentminded as a result. “I just got her to sleep about an hour ago.” 

That’s an interesting thing to know. Ellie has seemed a little droopy this week, but he doesn’t interact enough with her to make assumptions. 

“She okay?” He asks, and Joel pauses for just a second, looking upstairs like he can see her through the floor. 

“She…” He pauses for a moment. “It’s just been a hard week for her. She has those sometimes.” 

He’d like to pursue that further, but he imagines the Koys wouldn’t support a little family meeting right at this very moment. Before he walks out the door, Joel pauses. 

“If she wakes up, don’t lean over her or touch her unless you’re sure she knows it’s you.” 

Tommy has many questions from that as a result, but before he can even begin to ask, Joel’s out the door, leaving him in the dark house all alone. 

*

It goes fine for the first bit. He sits on Joel’s couch and puts his shoes up on the coffee table because his brother isn’t there to stop him, and then he pages through some of the books on the side table. They’re all about space, and he thinks with amusement that it must be Ellie’s influence. 

Then he hears screaming. 

He bolts upstairs at once, heart pounding, sure he’s about to burst in on a fucking infected in the room attacking Ellie. It’s a nonsense thought, but he doesn’t know how else to explain why the cries would sound so desperate. 

When he barges through the door, though, there’s just a small figure on the bed, Ellie through process of elimination but indiscernible with how dark the room is. He doesn’t know how to proceed as he creeps closer to the bed, unsure what to do but also unwilling to leave her whimpering on her mattress all alone. She sits up when a floorboard creaks under his foot, and then she throws herself halfway off the bed to get her arms around his waist, squeezing with surprising force. 

"Joel," she whimpers, face against his chest. He can feel that she’s shaking. 

Even without knowing the rest, the desperation she's clinging to what she thinks is Joel would tell him all he needed to know about what his brother is to this girl, her parent, her person, her safety. Her tremors ebb a bit as she holds onto him, like the very idea of Joel with her calms her. 

Unfortunately, though, he most certainly isn’t Joel. 

"Uh," he says, and then she shoves herself back, raises a leg, and kicks him in the chest with enough force to send him to the floor. 

"Where the fuck is Joel?" She demands, voice harsh and accusing, like he personally is the reason Joel isn’t here right now. “And what the fuck are you doing in my room?” 

He can’t even be amused at the very teenaged second sentence because god damn can she kick. He wheezes a bit, trying to get his breath back. 

“Neighbors,” he manages at least, the word more air than sound. 

“Why are you here?” She demands, and the tone of her voice suggests that any accord she may have been considering offering has ended. 

Before he can answer, they both hear the door open downstairs, and she perks up like a hound. 

“Joel?” She calls, voice hopeful, and when she hears a “Yeah,” she’s off the bed and out the door so fast it’s like she teleported. 

Moving significantly slower, he follows. 

When he’s downstairs, Ellie is in Joel’s arms, her feet not touching the ground. It looks like she jumped up to get her arms around Joel’s neck, and his arms on her back are holding her in place with his face buried in her hair. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” he hears him tell her, squeezing a little tighter. “The Koys had an emergency. I was hoping you’d stay asleep.” 

“I couldn’t get the cleaver,” she says, which means nothing to Tommy while also making goosebumps raise on his skin with how desperately she says it. 

It clearly means something to Joel, though, because he stoops to scoop her legs up. She tucks herself tight against him, and in the brighter light from downstairs, he can see she’s still shaking. 

“You’re alright,” Joel says. “You’re safe, baby girl. I’ve gotcha.”

He catches his brother’s eye over her head, but he raises a finger to his lips and steps back to let Joel carry Ellie upstairs without seeing him before he lets himself out.

He doesn’t know Ellie’s past, but he knows there’s more on her shoulders than any kid should have to carry. He certainly won’t add another thing. 

*

Ellie doesn’t look at him for a solid week after the mistaken identity incident. If he’d thought she ignored him before, he realizes she was practically Miss America with how ice queen she shows she can get after. He can tell from her posture and the set of her jaw that she’s expecting to be made fun of, and it makes him more than a little sad that she expects derision for her pain. 

With time, though, she loosens up a bit as he keeps his silence about the night. 

One evening she even passes him the cornbread when he asks and gives him the smallest nod of her head when he thanks her. 

It’s small, as progress goes, but he’ll take what he can get. 

*

Joel comes over one evening a couple weeks later to help build a built-in diaper table because Maria’s begun having nightmares of theirs collapsing under the baby. She shakes, when she wakes from these dreams, and irrational or not, the fear is real to her. 

So, diaper table that could survive a hurricane it is. 

“Ellie still at home?” He asks as casually as he can. He had honestly expected to see her lurking at doorways like a skittish cat all evening. 

But instead, it’s just him and his brother. 

Which, at this point, is fucking suspicious. 

“Nah,” Joel says, handing him a board to start sizing up the frame. “Some of the teenagers are sneaking out for a party at the edge of town.” 

He raises his eyebrows. 

“And you know this how?” 

Joel snorts, not looking up from the marks he’s making on a plank. 

“Because mine is the one teenager who asks before she sneaks out.” He looks up, expression amused. “She told me this morning and asked if she could go.” 

“That’s a surprise,” he says, and to him, it is. Joel, though, just shrugs. 

“She wouldn’t go somewhere without me knowing it,” he says. “She knows I’d worry.” 

There’s an understanding there, a total honesty, that’s a little overwhelming, frankly. He remembers his own teenaged years fondly (and in places, patchily), and he’d thought Ellie might be a little bit of a rebel, too. 

But then again, thinking of how desperately she clung to Joel that night she woke up without him there, perhaps it’s not such a surprise. She’s a tough girl, tougher than most, but she clearly adores Joel like a personal savior. 

“You ain’t worried about her drinking?” He asks instead of pursuing that line of thought, and Joel just shakes his head fondly. 

“If she wanted to, she knows she could try it at home.” That’s not surprising. He saw Joel let Sarah try a sip of beer a couple times in her last year, which he thinks was partially to satisfy her curiosity and partially to laugh at her face scrunching up with disgust. “Besides, she thinks it’s gross.” 

“Better ride that as far as you can,” he says teasingly, and Joel gives him a look. 

“Oh, I am. I played wrangler for your drunk ass enough times for a lifetime.” 

He feigns a swing at him with a hammer, which sparks a shoving contest that has them both grinning in challenge. It’s childish and stupid, but he hasn’t seen this Joel in twenty years, and fuck has he missed him. 

And then there’s a pounding at the front door, the urgency of which already has him moving to the hall, Joel right on his heels. 

“Joel! Tommy!” Maria calls up, and the tone of her voice has Joel almost elbowing him out of the way to beat him down the stairs. 

*

The story he only gets in pieces as they run with the kid who came to get them. Joel had heard “Ellie got hurt-” and taken off, and he’d followed behind with the kid, who had seemed very confused as to how Joel even knew which way to run. 

From what he’s gathered, a few of the older kids got more than a little wasted and one flung their hat up on some old construction materials next to the little building they’d had the party in. Ellie, as the smallest and the best climber present, had offered to go up and grab it. 

And she had, tossing it back down.

Right before the platform under her feet dropped out from under her and left her impaled on rebar. 

He’s panting trying to keep up with Joel, who seems driven by the terror of a parent into a speed he’s never seen from him before. He can feel his heart pounding for his brother and for Ellie, and he can only pray that the kid has exaggerated. 

Just a scratch, he thinks desperately. Let her be sitting up and complaining when we get there. Let Joel embarrass her in front of her friends and teach her a lesson on what and what not to climb. 

When they get there, though, it’s like a scene out of a fucking nightmare. 

Ellie is on her back on a pile of planks, gasping, pale-faced and wide-eyed, trembling. 

Through her side is a bloody length of rebar, jutting about a foot out of her. 

Blood is pooling around the puncture, soaking into the light blue of her button-down and settling into a pool beneath her. 

Joel sounds like he takes a punch to the gut when he sees her, and then he’s on his knees beside her. 

“You’re okay,” he tells her at once, and Tommy admires the way his voice doesn’t shake, even though he can see his hands are. “You’re fine, baby. I’m here. You’re gonna be okay.” He thinks Joel might be trying to speak it into existence. 

“Joel,” Ellie whimpers, eyes huge, and Joel leans down to kiss her head twice before he smooths her hair back. 

“I know, baby. You’re gonna be okay.” 

The doctor is there soon after, and Joel captures Ellie’s hands in his, keeping them from touching the wound as the doctor takes a look at it. Joel winces with each cry from Ellie, even as he keeps up a steady stream of words. 

“I know, baby. I know it hurts. Almost done. It’s almost over.” 

Tommy knows damn well he isn’t the only one stuck in some deeply fucked up deja vu in this moment. 

“Hurts,” Ellie whimpers, eyes squeezing shut as she tries to arch against the pain as the doctor presses at the area, and Tommy moves to press her chest back down so Joel won’t have to. Ellie’s eyes flick to him, and there’s no enmity in her expression. 

She’s not a rival for Joel’s attention right now. She’s just a terrified kid. 

“Hey kiddo,” he says softly, before he presses down again to keep her still when she jerks at the doctor ripping her shirt to get a better look.

If he thought Joel’s face was pained before, it’s nothing to the way he looks when it comes time to pull Ellie off. The doctor has said the rebar likely missed anything important by some miracle and so it’s safe to get her off and rush her to the clinic. 

There isn’t time for pain medicine, isn’t time for anything that will make the whole thing less soul-crushing to participate in. 

He and Joel work together to lift Ellie up carefully, cautious to make sure the rebar comes out the exact same angle it went in. The doctor keeps Ellie as still as possible, but she’s only human, and she jerks a bit as she screams, a sound that goes to his fucking soul and that he knows already will haunt Joel for the rest of his life. 

“Okay, baby, okay. I know. I know,” Joel soothes, nearly frantic with his need to fix an unfixable situation, as they rest Ellie on the ground propped against him so the doctor can pack the wound with gauze for the trip to the clinic. 

The moment she’s stable, Joel’s off, and Tommy trails along behind him with the doctor, left far in his wake. 

*

Joel nearly punches a clinic worker in the face when they try to suggest he leave Ellie, and Tommy thinks it’s due in no small part to the fact that the idea made Ellie grip him with white-knuckled terror. 

“I’m not leaving her,” he all but snarls, but he’s nothing but gentle as he looks down to Ellie, stroking her hair, her cheek, and letting her cling to him while she cries. They’ve administered some pain medication, but the bleeding is too severe to wait, and with her limitations, the one they have to use works slower. 

And then Ellie closes her eyes and doesn’t open them again. 

“No no no,” Joel says, voice broken. “Baby, open your eyes. Baby girl, look at me. Ellie? Ellie, baby, don’t you do this.” 

It takes all of his strength to haul Joel away when her passing out sends the staff into a flurry of activity, and he takes a blow to his jaw that’s going to bruise later with the effort it takes to pull his brother into the waiting room. He stands his ground in the doorway when Joel tries to bull his way back in, and it’s only returning a punch that gets him to stagger back enough to listen. 

“You need to let them work!” He says, catching Joel by the shoulders and keeping hold even as he’s partially driven back through the swinging door. 

“I can’t leave her, Tommy,” Joel all but begs. 

“You’re not,” he says. “Joel, you’re not leaving her. You’re going to sit out here and wait, and you’ll go back in the second you can.” Joel opens his mouth to protest, and he shakes him. “Joel, you cannot help her in there. You’ll only get in the way of people who can.” 

That reaches him, and even if he does it reluctantly, he goes when Tommy guides him into a chair. 

They’re both bloody, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to suggest they both clean up, but Joel’s face clearly says he won’t be moving from this exact spot until Ellie’s okay. 

(Please God let Ellie be okay.)

A clinic worker comes into the waiting area and says that Ellie will need a transfusion, and he’s rolling up his sleeve before she even finishes speaking. 

“Universal donor,” he says when Joel looks at him, and he sees a gratitude that words can’t reach in his brother’s eyes. 

He’s aware as the woman sets up the blood draw that it isn’t only Ellie’s life in the balance in this clinic tonight. 

If Ellie doesn't make it, Joel won't be far behind.

The worker tries to stop at the first bag, but he threatens to grab another one himself until she sets another to fill. Ellie’s a little bitty thing, and even knowing how much of his own response was from observations seen through panic, he knows she’s lost far more blood than she can afford. If she needs more, he has it to give. He’s a large man, and she’s a little girl. He surely has enough blood for both of them. 

He’s never told Joel this, has never dared poking at the thought in case his brother didn’t have it first, but he knows Joel may be the father who couldn’t block a bullet, but he’s the uncle who couldn’t shoot one fast enough.

If Ellie dies tonight, he needs to know that there's not a single thing he could have done differently.

He doesn’t know how he’ll live with himself, otherwise. 

*

The waiting room is a hellish sort of purgatory as they wait. The clinic worker has taken blood and told him she’ll tell Maria on him if he tries to give any more, and so there’s nothing to do but wait. He tentatively suggests that Joel might want to step outside to a faucet with him and rinse off, but his brother just gives a terse shake of his head, eyes focused on the door to the room Ellie’s in with so much intensity it’s a shock he hasn’t burned holes in it. He’d like to get Ellie’s blood off his skin, personally, but he also doesn’t dare leave Joel unattended. 

He’s angry, he realizes after a while, not at Ellie or at Joel, but at a world that would put them in this spot, that would cover Joel’s hands in Ellie’s blood the same way it did Sarah’s. How cruel, to give him another girl to love with everything he has, only try to take her away. How utterly vicious, to make him a father again, only to make him bury another daughter. 

Don’t you give up, you little demon, he thinks in Ellie’s direction. You didn’t come all this way to die now. You die, and you leave him alone with me, all to myself. You don’t want that. 

But he knows, even as he thinks it, that she won’t be leaving Joel behind. 

If she leaves, there’s nothing in the world that will make Joel stay. 

*

When the doctor comes out, hands bloody and face unreadable, he tenses despite his dizziness. He’s trying to catalog what Joel might make an attempt with. He’s younger and they’re about the same build, but he’s never beat his big brother in a fight before, and a man driven by desperation and grief can do a great deal. Joel won’t want to draw it out if the world is going to try and make him live with Ellie gone. 

“She’s stable,” the doctor says, and it’s like someone cut the strings holding Joel up, the way he bows forward, barely catching himself with his forearms against his knees as his breath leaves him in one big rush of air. “She-” 

But Joel’s on his feet then, beelining to his girl like she’s a magnet tugging him back. 

Tommy wobbles a bit when he’s on his feet, but he remains standing. 

“Thank you,” he tells the doctor with a small smile, and she gives him a nod. 

“We got the bleeding stopped and the wound sewn up. The blood transfusion saved her life. If she makes it through tonight, she should be fine.” 

She will, he thinks desperately. She’ll make it and be back to being petty with him in no time. Hell, after this, she could keep Joel from leaving the house at all if she felt like it. 

When he enters the room, he sees Joel washing his hands in the sink, looking over his shoulder to keep his eyes on Ellie like she’ll disappear if he doesn’t. He’s pleased that they’re finally in the “wash a child’s blood off our hands” portion of the evening, but he doesn’t understand the sudden motivation until Joel’s back at her side, cloth and bowl of water in hand. 

Ellie’s shirt has been tucked up to show her belly and rib cage, and the clinic workers have sponged her off there, but Joel clearly drove everyone else off with his reentry, and he sits carefully beside her as he starts cleaning off the rest of the blood himself, starting with her face. 

“You’re gonna be fine, baby,” he says gently, almost conversationally. “Just gotta getcha clean.” 

He leans against the doorframe, feeling like he’s intruding but still unwilling to leave Joel alone until Ellie’s awake and clearly fine. Joel handles Ellie with so much care, so much love, that he’s a little overwhelmed just seeing it. He cleans her face with soft, careful strokes of the cloth and then moves down, picking up her hands one at a time to rest on his palm, cleaning each finger individually and then pressing her knuckles to his lips, eyes closed, like he’s willing strength into her through sheer willpower and contact. He talks to her while he works, but they’re mainly nonsense words, more meant for cadence than meaning. 

At some point, Maria comes, leaves, and then returns with clean clothes for them both. He hesitates. Ellie’s blood has made his clothes stiff, and she’s stable for now, but each time he blinks he sees Joel on Sarah’s grave, bleeding from his head, gun still in hand. 

“Go,” Maria says gently. “I’ll stay.” 

So desperately thankful for her, he pulls her into a kiss more heated than he’d usually participate in in public, but she just gives him a smile when he backs off and then shoves him gently out of the room. 

He changes quickly and scrubs the blood off his arms and hands. He trusts Maria, of course he does, but she’s also almost full term, and he’d rather not pit her against a desperate Joel. When he gets back, though, Maria is just sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, and Joel is still tending to Ellie. He has her head turned slightly so he can rinse the blood from the end of her ponytail, and then he pulls the ponytail out and brushes her hair back so she can lay comfortably. When he gets to Maria’s side, he sees her eyes are damp, and he presses a hand to her shoulder that she covers with her own, squeezing gently. 

It’s as a trio, then, that they wait, as night slowly becomes dawn, and they wait to see how many of them will make it to the next night. 

*

He’s about ready to see if he can bodily force Joel into the bathroom to change when Ellie starts stirring. Joel is alert in a moment, but Tommy notes he doesn’t lean over her, and he remembers the warning he got on the night he sat with her. 

“Ellie baby?” The speed with which Joel says it makes it sound like Ellie-baby, like it’s one compound word, and he repeats it. “Hey, can you open those eyes for me? Been too long since I’ve seen my brown-eyed girl.” The tone of the words clearly says this is an inside joke, and he thinks of how often he’s heard the strains of one particular song drifting across the street during afternoon guitar practice. 

“Jo?” Ellie’s voice is thick and she doesn’t manage his full name, but Joel still looks ready to cry when her eyes flutter open. 

“Hey, baby, it’s me. I’m right here.” 

It’s only when Ellie weakly moves her head to the side and makes eye contact with him that he leans forward. He cups her face in his hands and leans down, kissing her head and then lingering, eyes closed, to press his forehead to hers before he pulls back. 

“Happened?” Ellie asks weakly, hissing when she moves. 

“You fell,” Joel says softly, hand catching hers when she moves automatically to press it to the wound. “Don’t touch,” he says, thumb stroking over her hand. “It’ll make it worse.” He looks to Tommy then, and he’s a little surprised he’s even remembered there are other people in the room. “Can you get the doctor to give her more pain medicine?” 

“I don’t know if-” He starts, but Joel cuts him off. 

“I looked at the notes to check which one they used,” when he did this, Tommy has no fucking clue, but his tone is confident, assured, clearly a man who’s spent extended time in a hospital with this specific child. “They only gave her 8 to start with, but she can have 8.34 milligrams of this one through a slow IV release every four hours. She’s due for a dose.” 

Well…alright then. 

*

It’s another hour and a half before he finally convinces Joel to go clean up and change clothes, and he really only succeeds because Ellie choruses him with a weak “Yeah, Joel” that makes him gently flick her nose. She giggles and then winces, which almost disrupts their entire progress, but she shoves at him weakly, and finally, he goes, Tommy shoving him the rest of the way out the door when he hesitates again. 

“I’ve got her, you helicopter parent,” he says, putting his back into it. “Now go change clothes already. Jesus.” 

Joel flips him off, but he goes. 

And then he’s left with Ellie, Maria having left earlier to go inform parents whose teenagers didn’t tell them what they were up to that they likely had a traumatic night if they weren’t too drunk to remember it. 

He’s carefully not looking at Ellie, pretending to inspect the contents of the drawers in the room, to respect that she might not want to engage while she feels weak, but to his surprise, she speaks. Her voice is still hoarse, both from weakness and from screaming, but it carries. 

“Joel said you gave blood,” she says, and he looks to her, trying to work out how she wants him to respond. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly. 

“Joel said you gave a lot.” 

He shrugs. 

“Like a dumb amount.”

That makes him smile, just slightly, and the lack of anger in Ellie’s voice makes him bold enough to take a chair near her bed, if not right next to it. She turns her head to look at him when he sits, and he tries and fails to read her. She’s pale, still, and she shivers now and then despite the blankets on top of her, but her eyes are clear and focused despite the 8.34 milligrams of pain reliever the medical staff were harassed into putting into her IV, now saline and not blood. 

“Joel’s been talking shit about me?” He asks, keeping his tone light. “You should hear some of the stories I could tell about-” 

“He said I would have died if you hadn’t done that.” Her eyes are searching, and he realizes she’s looking for a reaction. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her anyone would have done it, that the medical staff could have found another so she won’t feel like he’s trying to hold it over her, but something tells him that dismissing it would be the wrong move. 

“Maybe,” he allows, “you lost a lot. Let that be a lesson to you about climbing where you shouldn’t.” 

She doesn’t rise to the bait. 

“Joel said you didn’t even hesitate. You just rolled your sleeve up ready to go when the nurse went out.” 

He’s a little impressed with how much Joel’s filled Ellie in in the few brief moments he’s been out of the room. 

“You needed it,” he says with a shrug, leaning back and crossing his arms across his chest with faux-casualness. He doesn’t know what she wants from him with this little line of questioning, and he desperately doesn’t want to upset her, not when she’s still so fragile and Joel might actually kill him over it. “I had it. Easy choice.” 

“You could have let me die,” she says, and it hurts, a little, the lack of emotion behind it. It lets him know she knows plenty of people who would have. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” he tells her seriously. “I know we have our differences, you and me, but you can trust me, you know. I know you don’t believe th-”

“I do trust you.”

Well that’s a surprise. She smiles, just a bit, when she reads it on his face. 

“I don’t have to like you to trust you.” 

He snorts. 

“I don’t…” She starts and then stops, looking away and biting the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know where to fit with you,” she decides finally, eyes flicking to him briefly before she looks away. Her fingers fidget with a loose thread on one of the blankets. “I know Joel was yours first, and he loves you a lot. I don’t…I don’t want to keep you two away from each other. But I don’t…I don’t know where I fit when it’s you two. You guys talk about stuff I don’t understand and you make jokes I don’t get, and I just…I don’t like it.”

“You and Joel do the same thing,” he says softly, and then she looks at him again. “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but sometimes it’s like you two share a brain.” She smiles a little bit at that, obviously pleased, and it makes him smile in response. “What you and Joel have is real special, Ellie. Joel being my brother doesn’t change that.” 

“Is that why you gave me the blood?” She asks. “For Joel?” 

Partially, yes. In the moment there was no thought to it, not really, beyond the immediate need to contribute, but he knows he saved Joel’s life by helping to save Ellie’s. 

It’s not the only reason, though. 

“I think you’re a pretty cool kid, y’know,” he offers, and he sees the flicker of surprise on her face before she tucks it away. “And you give Joel shit, which he needs to keep him in line.” She grins at that. “Be a shame if you kicked the bucket before I got the chance to get to know you, too.”

“I’ve been mean to you,” she points out, and he shrugs. 

“You forget, I’ve been around a teenaged girl before. I think being mean is just part of the puberty thing.” 

“Sarah?” She asks, ignoring the joke. He nods. “Joel…Joel said he thinks Sarah would have liked me. Do you…do you think she would have?” There’s a vulnerability to the question he didn’t expect to experience from her. She genuinely wants to know. 

“Well,” he says, tilting his head to one side. “I know I like you, and that’s after you’ve been a little demon to me.” It’s meant as a joke, but Ellie’s face is still serious. “Yeah, I think she would have. I think you two would have been something else together. Joel’s hair would have been white by now between the two of you.” 

She smiles, again, and this time it’s a soft, grateful thing. 

“Thanks,” she says, and he knows it’s not just for any one thing. It’s a bigger thanks than that. 

“You’re welcome,” he says and then pauses before he decides to commit to what he wants to say next. “‘s what family’s for.” 

Ellie inhales softly at that, and he sees her eyes get just a little shiny. 

When she smiles at him, there’s another thank you that’s unspoken. 

*

Ellie is a righteous terror until she gets her freedom, and between her appeals for her liberty and Joel harassing the medical staff, he knows they won’t be missed in the clinic for however long it is until a dumb decision gets one of them back in a cot. 

He knows, for both of them, that it’s not about the clinic itself, not really. They still haven’t told him much about the Fireflies, not in any real detail, but he reads the tension on both of them the entire time they’re in the clinic, and he sees Ellie’s heart monitor tick higher whenever a doctor or nurse enters the room. If what he can put together from seeing Ellie in the aftermath and from the way Joel tracks each person who gets close to her with a needle or stethoscope is even half-accurate, it’s little wonder they’re both so on edge. 

As he’d thought would be the case, Joel is rarely far from Ellie’s side as she recovers. She’s on bedrest for a week after she’s home, which after day three he thinks might have to be enforced with rope and handcuffs to judge from the number of escape attempts he sees from the windows facing her and Joel’s house. 

By week three, she’s well enough to be on her feet relatively normally, and she and Joel rejoin them in the dining hall for supper. Breakfast and lunch are a bit more loose because all of them work different schedules, but supper’s been a nice break to actually talk. After everything with Ellie and the rebar, Maria and Joel seem to have reached a new understanding with each other, and with that tension slowly abating, it’s a far more comfortable experience than it was previously. 

“Tired?” Joel asks Ellie one night. She’s been slowly listing to one side to lean against him throughout dessert, and the muffled noise she makes in response before she yawns clearly says that her head shake is a lie. Joel exhales a laugh and then bends to kiss the top of her head, still not putting down his cards from the game of Rummy they’ve been playing. Tommy, though, prepares for Ellie to lift her arms and wait to be picked up and carried off. 

Instead, though, when Joel starts to put down his cards, she stops him. 

“Nah, you keep playing,” she says, finally pushing herself upright and stretching as far as she can with stitches still in her side. She turns to Maria, who just finished stacking their plates and has been tapping together the papers she’s been looking at in preparation to put them away in a folder. “You’re going home, right?” Maria nods, and Ellie turns back to Joel. “I can walk home with her. Finish your game.” 

Tommy thinks it’s a wonder he manages to keep his jaw from dropping. 

“You sure?” Joel asks, frowning. 

"Yeah I'm sure," she says with a roll of her eyes. "It'll be nice to have you out of my hair for once.”

"Oh, am I cramping your style?" He asks dryly.

"Like you wouldn't believe. I haven't had a house party in weeks."

Joel snorts.

"Save your ragers for when you can bend enough to tie your own shoes again, party animal."

Despite the sass though, he's nothing but careful as he helps lever her up from her chair, holding onto her for a moment to make sure she has her feet under her. 

“I’ll be home soon if you wanna wait up,” he tells her, as he pulls her chair out for her. 

“Go get a drink or something,” she says. “It’ll give me more time to sneak in the strippers.” 

“Do you even know what a stripper is?” Joel asks, clearly dubious, and she shrugs. 

“I know it makes your face look funny when I mention them.” 

Joel rolls his eyes and mimes a shove, even though he doesn’t come anywhere close to actually pushing her, too cautious of the way she’s still injured. 

“Get out of here, you little deviant. Go reflect on your sins or something.” 

Still, when she gingerly leans forward, he still kisses her temple before she goes. 

She catches Tommy’s eye before she leaves, and there’s an understanding there, an acknowledgement that this is a step she’s choosing to make. 

He nods, and she nods back.

*

It's not until he goes to leave with Joel an hour later that he discovers peace has come at the cost of the little punk stealing his jacket before she left.

“Your kid’s a klepto,” he grouses to Joel, which just makes his brother laugh and put an arm around his shoulders. 

“Yeah, she is,” he agrees, but the tone of his voice says clearly that he wouldn’t want her any different. 

Looking at his brother, alive again in a way he thought he’d never be, he has to agree.