Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ellie knows before she’s even told that the woman is a former FEDRA officer. There’s a way she carries herself that raises Ellie’s hackles at once, makes her stand up straighter, makes her hyper-aware of the dirt on her shoes and the way her ponytail is slipping out, both infractions that would be punishable under FEDRA regulations. 

In an instant, Ellie knows they’re destined to hate each other. 

“-llie?” 

She jumps at a touch to her shoulder, pulling in instinctively, expecting a blow, expecting a jolt from an electrostaff, expecting-

“What’s wrong?” 

She centers herself back in the here and now at the same moment Joel tugs her into a little sidestreet face crinkled in concern as he nudges her chin up gently to make her look at him. 

“Talk to me,” he says. “What’s wrong? What hurts?” 

She could almost laugh at that last question. It had become common enough in the hospital that she thinks it’s just reflexive for Joel at this point. Now, though, she just feels embarrassed. How can she explain that someone just looked like they’re FEDRA and suddenly Ellie is an orphan back in a concrete building with no one to braid her hair back or make sure she eats or sit up with her after a nightmare or teach her guitar on a porch swing in the cool evening air? 

Even in her own head, it sounds pathetic. 

“Nothing,” she says with a smile, tugging her chin back. She scrambles for an excuse that won’t make Joel stress out about her; he’s done more than enough of that for a lifetime. “Thought I forgot to do something for school, but I remembered it’s not due until next week.” 

Joel looks uncertain for a moment–she realizes only too late that she usually gives him a full report of what happened at school so a suddenly remembered assignment would be suspicious–but she loops a hand around his arm and tugs, groaning dramatically as she bends backwards, her mass practically nothing against his. 

“Now c’mon,” she says. “Or I’m gonna fucking starve.” She looks him in the eye and makes her expression grave, still tugging on him with enough force that she’s fucked if he moves too suddenly. “To death.” 

He rolls his eyes but finally starts walking, tugging her up when she stumbles. 

“Alright, alright,” he grumbles, “enough with the drama.” 

On the way to the dining hall, she keeps herself tucked on the side of him that keeps her from seeing the woman at all.

*

She doesn’t find out until her math study period what the woman’s name is, not until she enters the room she usually spends the time in and finds her waiting there with the school’s director, Ms. Erin. She freezes at the doorway before she’s even been noticed, thrown and wondering if she’s in the wrong room. Because the winters get so harsh, Jackson’s school year starts in spring and runs through fall, which means they arrived in time for Ellie to start class after she’d had time to recover from playing labrat. It had been fine for the most part, if a little strange to be in a school system so different than the one she’d grown up in. 

The one thing that had been absolutely intolerable, though, had been her math teacher, a man named Mr. Carl, who seemed friendly and inoffensive, but from the moment she’d sat down in a seat, the only thing she could think about was, Are you dangerous the same way he was dangerous?

She’d started ditching on day three. 

Joel had been called in for a meeting with Ms. Erin about her ditching on day six. 

It had been a surprise, the fact that someone else would be informed about her breaking the rules. She’d just expected to pay for it later, to take her punishments and keep going until she earned them again. She hadn’t foreseen them bringing Joel in to talk about it. 

She also hadn’t foreseen Joel taking her side. 

She doesn’t actually remember telling Joel about David being a math teacher. From what she’s gathered since, she’d told him at some point in the days right after Silver Lake, the ones that are fuzzy for her now. She’d been startled when he brought it up after what she’s been informed is called a parent-teacher conference–the first part of which she has deliberately not thought about further–and she’d been even more startled when he immediately took her side. It had been nice, an adult sticking up for her and even finding a way to make things easier for her. The end result had been her “independent study” of sitting in a classroom by herself to work through some math books. There hadn’t been a teacher free to instruct her, but she’s done her assignments pretty faithfully and left them on Mr. Carl’s desk each morning. 

The system working well means she has less than no idea why it’s being disrupted now. 

“Ellie!” Ms. Erin says brightly, turning and smiling. It’s kind of strange, still, adults automatically smiling when they see her. Joel and even Tommy kind of make sense, at least, but even people she doesn’t know well smile the same way when they see her, like they’re happy to see her just because. The woman with Ms. Erin, though, doesn’t smile, and it’s almost a relief to receive a reaction she’s used to. 

“Uh, hi,” she says, and she doesn’t miss how the woman’s lips thin for a moment. Unable to help it, she meets her gaze in an automatic gesture of rebellion. 

The immediate annoyance she sees there at the audacity is a cold kind of comfort in how familiar it is. 

“This is Janet Mason,” Ms. Erin says, either not noticing or choosing to ignore their brief staring contest. “She’s new to town.” 

“From a QZ,” Ellie says. 

It’s not a question. 

“Great guessing!” Ms. Erin says, as cheerful as she is about everything. “Got it in one. She just got here a couple of weeks ago, and after having a little time to settle in, she’s agreed to supervise your independent study. She was a math teacher back in the Boise QZ, and since we already have classes sorted out for the year, I was thinking it would be helpful for her to work with you on your math time. What do you think?” 

She sees Janet give Ms. Erin a sharp look, like she’s shocked by Ellie being asked her opinion about it. Ellie’s almost relieved to see that at least one other person understands that Jackson’s system is strange. 

“Ellie?” Ms. Erin prompts, smile fading slightly. She leans forward and lowers her voice. “Is that okay with you, sweetheart? I know your dad,” the use of the term for Joel startles her, but she manages to keep it under control, “said you had some problems in the past with a math teacher. If you wanna think it over or talk to him-” 

“No,” Ellie says at once. Her own thoughts about this Janet person aside, she absolutely does not want to have to pull Joel into more stuff because of her own stupid hangups. “No, this is fine. I just wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.” 

Ms. Erin hesitates a moment, but finally she gives Ellie a small smile and whispers, “Let me know how it goes after, alright?” before leaving. 

The second she’s out of the door, the other woman turns to her. 

“You will refer to me as Ms. Mason or ma’am. You will never use my first name. Do you understand?” 

Ellie grits her teeth. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

*

“Wrong,” Ms. Mason says when Ellie’s halfway through a problem only a few minutes into their “class” together. 

Ellie grits her teeth. The woman’s been lurking over her shoulder for the entire fucking class period, and it’s made her nervous. She’d been doing fine until now, though, when she started solving a math problem the way she saw it out of a book. She makes herself remain calm, and even though she very highly doubts it’ll make a single difference, she tries to explain. 

“I saw in the book where-” 

The whistle of air past a switch is a noise she’s known as long as she’s been able to remember, and the shock of pain as it cracks down over her shoulder blade is as familiar as her own reflection. 

Still, after months of its absence, it makes her freeze. 

“I didn’t ask for excuses,” Ms. Mason says, tapping the ruler in her hand over the paper. “Start over.” 

Ellie feels her anger in her chest like a solid thing, like a burning coal just behind her breastbone. 

Still, she knows how this game goes. 

Gritting her teeth, she erases her work and waits to be told how she’s supposed to do it. 

*

Her back is on fire by the end of her math period, but she still makes herself stay in her seat, not even packing her stuff, until Ms. Mason has gathered her things first. She keeps her eyes fixed on her desk, back throbbing with pain, until the bitch finally leaves the door, and then she throws her things in her bag and leaves the room as quickly as she can, filled with a desperate need to get away. She feels humiliated, and–stupid as she knows it is–faintly betrayed. This is the system she’s used to, the system she’s always known. 

But it’s not the system she thought she would have here, not after weeks of lulling her into a false sense of security only to yank the rug from under her later. 

“How’d it go, sweetpea?” 

She turns at the sound of Ms. Erin’s voice and finds the woman smiling at her. The pet name feels like a mockery now, but she knows better than to call her on it. Ellie understands who she is now. She’s met her type before, after all, many times: the adults who like to call themselves kind because they let someone else do the hitting for them. 

“Fine,” she says, looking down at her shoes so the woman won’t see the simmering resentment in her eyes.

Ellie’s gotten more than a few beatings for that particular offense, after all.  

From under her lashes, she sees the woman pause in her approach, and when she starts moving again, she walks to Ellie and leans in, voice low. 

“Are you alright, Ellie?” She asks. “You look a little flushed, sweetheart. Do you need to visit the clinic?” 

She barely resists the urge to snort. Joke at her expense or not, Ms. Erin has no way of knowing that Ellie would literally rather die in the street than ever set foot into anything remotely medical again. She makes herself look up, squaring her shoulders despite the way it makes her back scream with pain as the skin stretches and her backpack settles against it, all of the corners of her books suddenly seeming ten times pointier. 

“I’m fine, ma’am,” she says, in the same robot voice that got her in the least amount of trouble back in Boston. 

Ms. Erin blinks before leaning in, brow creasing slightly in concern. 

“Do we need to have a conversation in my office, sweetheart? Did Ms. Janet do something? Do you want to go back to your solo study? I thought you would like having someone you could ask questions to, but if you prefer studying alone, that’s completely fine.” 

Ellie’s smart enough to know a trap when she sees it, and it’s an effort not to sneer at the woman for trying to trap her in such an obvious way. Jesus, she hasn’t been dumb enough to fall for something like that since she was six. She puts on her blandest smile and meets the woman’s eyes. 

“No, ma’am,” she says. “It was very…” She searches for the right word. “Educational.” 

Ms. Erin still doesn’t seem convinced that Ellie hasn’t fallen for the trap, but when she walks around her to get to science before she’s late, the woman doesn’t stop her. 

*

“I’m home,” she calls that afternoon when she’s back from school. She sits down on their hall bench to take her shoes off, barely resisting the urge to hiss when leaning forward pulls at her sore back. God, she’s forgotten how to accommodate this kind of hurt. Months without it have made her soft. 

“Good day?” Joel asks, appearing around the corner. His smile fades slightly when he gets a look at her. “You feeling okay?” 

“Fine,” she says, only remembering at the last moment not to shrug. “Why?” 

“You look a little pale,” he says, stepping close and pressing the back of his hand to her forehead and then her cheek. 

She pretends it doesn’t make her eyes sting, such a gentle touch when her body still hurts so badly from an angry hand earlier. 

“Not getting sick, are you?” Joel asks, stepping back. 

“Nah,” she says. “Just got a little nauseous looking at your face too close.” 

She grins when he rolls his eyes before flicking her nose. 

“Swear to God one of these days, I’m rehoming you,” he grumbles, returning to the living room. 

Despite the threat, when she tucks herself down beside him on the sofa–almost desperate for more soft touches to help her forget how badly her back hurts–he doesn’t push her away. 

*

She considers telling Joel that night about Ms. Mason. He falls asleep during their movie, and instead of coming up with jokes about how old he is for when he wakes up, she sits and studies him, trying to decide what she should do. He’s protective over her–over-protective, Maria and Tommy often say under their breath–and she knows if anyone else raised a hand to her, Joel would probably chop the hand off. 

And yet she hesitates. 

Part of her hesitation is because she knows she can’t technically defend herself, not really. She understands the reasoning behind Ms. Mason’s actions, after all. Ellie got shit wrong and then started to argue, polite as she tried to make it. She knows those things mean pain. It’s a lesson she’s known since she was a little kid. The only person she has to blame for the way her back hurts is herself.

The other part of her hesitation is a reluctance to make Joel involve himself in her problems again. She hadn’t asked him before, hadn’t expected him to do anything, but he’d still gone to Ms. Erin of his own accord, had taken care of the problem for her. At the time she’d just felt relief, but now she wonders if it was just to make his life easier. After all, he was the one who had to deal with getting called down to talk to Ms. Erin for her playing hooky. The part of herself that was tended to for months in the hospital tells her Joel cares, tells her Joel will do anything she needs of him, tells her Joel would want to know if someone hurt her. 

But the other part of her thinks about how much she’s already given Joel to do on her behalf. It’s not fair, dragging him into something else, especially when it’s something she’s already used to. And what if it’s too much? She’s always afraid of reaching the final straw, of getting to the point where whatever affection Joel has for her is outweighed by how much of a hassle having her is. 

And what if this is how he expects things to go? FEDRA couldn’t have come up with all of it in a vacuum, after all. What if they got their system from how schools worked Before? Jackson is different from Before; Joel told her that. What if their school system is like communism? What if it’s the exception and not the rule? If Joel already knows that Ms. Mason’s way is how school should go anyway, what would he think about Ellie complaining about it? 

In the end, she doesn’t tell him. 

She just lays her head down on his shoulder and closes her eyes. 

*

Her best guess for why she’s been assigned to Ms. Mason in the weeks that follow is to make sure the woman still knows her stuff, to make sure she was telling the truth when she said she had experience teaching. The Jackson school system has been lackadaisical since Ellie got here, and it’s not a surprise they’d need to straighten up at some point. Hell, she’s even heard students laughing in class. There’s no fucking way that would have flown in the QZ, when even smiling might get you a punishment for not taking your assignments seriously. It had to happen, sooner or later, Jackson realizing they needed to try out the way school worked Before. 

She just wishes she hadn’t been pushed into being a guinea pig yet again. 

*

“Everything okay, kiddo?” 

She looks up at the sound of Joel’s voice, finding him studying her. She’s in her usual spot in the corner of his workshop, curled up in what she’s been told is called a papasan chair. When they first got to town, she didn’t go anywhere without him, and she spent hours in this very spot, reassured by the very childish superstition that if she just kept her eyes on him, then she’d be safe. She’s ventured out now, made friends, gotten to know people, but she still spends at least an hour or so a day hanging out with him in here, working on a school assignment or reading a book or drawing in her sketchbook. She likes their Joel And Ellie Time, some quiet togetherness listening to music and working on their own stuff. She’s not sure why he’s disrupting it now. 

“Yeah?” She asks. “Why?” 

Joel has that squinty look he has when he’s focusing hard on something he thinks she’s hiding from him, and despite herself, she feels the back of her neck get prickly with nervous anticipation. 

“You winced when you went to sit back just then. You hurt yourself?” 

She barely resists the urge to wince again. She hadn’t realized she was moving stiffly. She’s gotten used to the background noise of her back hurting at this point, but Ms. Mason had come to class in an extra-bad mood today and used even more force than usual. 

Along with a fucking yardstick instead of a ruler. 

“Just…” She scrambles for an excuse. “Cramps.” She says. 

Joel, though, just frowns. 

“Still?” 

Shit. She forgot. She had her period last week, which he knows because she drinks the tea Maria gave her, and he makes it for her in the mornings when he makes his coffee. 

“Leg cramps,” she corrects, stretching one out in demonstration. “We had a race at school.” She makes herself stop before she goes too elaborate with her lie, already feeling like shit for deceiving him. 

It’s just that telling him the truth would feel worse. 

“You win?” Joel asks, apparently satisfied and going back to his work. 

She smiles and hopes it doesn’t look like as much of a grimace as it feels. 

“Not this time.” 

*

Before they leave for the dining hall for dinner that night, Joel pulls her up short in the house. She tilts her head at him in question, wondering if she missed some dirt on her face or something. For a guy who didn’t care about manners on the road, he’s gone full good behavior on her here. 

“You sure everything’s okay?” He asks. 

“Yep,” she says brightly. “Be better if I had some honey butter and cornbread in front of me, though,” she adds in a completely transparent effort at ending this conversation and replacing it with a meal.

“Ellie,” Joel says, cupping her face in one hand. “I’m serious, kiddo. You’ve been acting off recently. If something’s wrong, you can talk to me. I don't care how bad you think it is. We’ll figure it out. I’ll handle it.” 

As if taunting her, she can feel every bruise on her back throb. 

She could do it, she knows. She could tell Joel Ms. Mason’s been hitting her, but even in her own head, it sounds juvenile as fuck. Yeah, Joel, I got shit wrong or talked back, and then I got punished for it. It might not be how he handles stuff with her, but he’s the one who was all pro-school from the start, and if this is just how school was Before, then he knew it was coming. 

And what would he think of her if she had to tell him she’s so fucking bad at it that she gets hit every single day? 

“I think it’s just pollen and shit,” she says. “Like what Tommy was talking about?” She is allergic to pollen, as it turns out, and she’d spent more than a few weeks earlier sneezing her brains out in sniffly solidarity with Tommy. It’s settled down now, but it’s the only thing she’s got to offer as an excuse that isn't just telling him that she sucks at doing something he wants her to do. 

“You promise?” Joel asks, and she can tell he doesn’t believe her. “Super promise?” 

She smiles faintly. “Super promise” is a shorthand of theirs, an “I need you to tell me the real truth” thing she started back in the hospital when she could tell there was stuff he was trying to hide from her. It doesn’t get brought out often to preserve its integrity, and it getting deployed now means she doesn’t want to break it. 

“Just some stuff I’m figuring out,” she says. “I’ll tell you, I promise. Just…not right now.” 

Never would be preferable, but she’ll settle for “until I figure out exactly what Ms. Mason wants so I won’t need to get hit so often” if she must. 

Joel is quiet for a long moment, and she’s afraid he’s going to insist, but finally he just sighs, pulling her into a hug and resting his chin on top of her head. 

“Whenever you’re ready, kiddo,” he tells her. “I’m here to listen.” 

Her eyes sting, and she pretends it’s just because he’s pressing too hard against the marks on her back. 

*

In her stupid smugness, she thinks the switch is the worst thing Ms. Mason can do to her, and she’s old friends with pain. She knows how to handle it, especially after she’s had time to get used to it again. 

And then the bitch figures out how to make the equivalent of The Hole. 

“You’ll return here after school,” Ms. Mason says, and Ellie looks up, staring at her. 

“What?” 

She knows the hit is coming before it lands this time, though this time it catches her across the cheek, and she presses a hand to the spot, surprised and praying it doesn’t leave a mark. It’s bad enough that she can feel the others hidden by her clothes. She can’t bear the idea of other people being able to see one on her face and knowing what she did to earn it. 

“Clearly,” Ms. Mason says, like nothing’s happened, “corporal punishment isn’t enough for you. You will return here after school.” 

“I can’t-” She starts, and the blow lands across her shoulder blade this time. She grits her teeth and stares at her hands. “Yes, ma’am.” 

*

She spends the rest of the day trying to come up with an excuse for Joel about why she’ll have to go back to school in the afternoon. She’s started doing more work with the art teacher on a mural, but if she uses that as an excuse, he’ll want to see it, or he might tag along to watch her work. She could also say she has to work on a group project, but then he’ll want to know more about it or ask who she’s working with. She could lie to Tommy and ask if he’ll cover for her–he’s jokingly offered before to help out with any “fun teen delinquency” she might be up to–but she doesn’t know if he’ll actively lie to his brother. 

In the end, though, she doesn’t end up having to come up with an excuse, a note on their chalkboard by the door removing the need.  

E, 

Headed out to help with a watchtower collapse. Back late. Eat a vegetable at supper, brush your teeth, don’t play with matches, etc. 

-J

She stares at it for a long while and tries very hard not to feel faintly betrayed. 

*

She follows Ms. Mason silently when she’s led away from the school, trying to ignore the way she feels like puking at the unknown of what’s coming. She tries to reassure herself that it can’t be too bad, but she has a lifetime of experience to contradict the assertion. When they arrive at an abandoned house, Ms. Mason leads her around the side and pulls open a cellar door, and Ellie sees stairs leading down to absolute blackness. She stares at it. 

“In,” Ms. Mason says impatiently. 

Ellie doesn’t move. 

“In,” Ms. Mason says, harder. “Don’t play stupid with me. I’m sure you’re very well acquainted with The Hole.” 

She can barely hear her over the ringing in her ears. She’d stopped being afraid of The Hole when she was 8, used to it by then, but she’d never liked it. 

And now she knows all about the things that can live in dark cellars. 

“It’s not safe,” she hears herself say. 

Ms. Mason snorts. 

“Really?” She asks. “You don’t think you’re a little old for that behavior?” 

Ellie clenches her jaw. 

“It’s your choice, Cad-Miss Williams. You can accept your punishment, or I can let the school authorities and your guardian know that you’ve been incapable of meeting class standards and that you’ve also now refused to accept the consequences of your behavior. I imagine they’ll be fairly displeased.”

She imagines what it would feel like, having to face people and say she refused to go in the dark because she was nervous about what might be inside. She’s too old to be such a fucking baby, and she knows it. 

Squaring her shoulders, she walks down the steps, her feet feeling like concrete blocks. She begs her knees not to buckle on her, to not add another level of humiliation to this whole thing. 

When the door shuts above her, the darkness is absolute. 

*

She doesn’t know how long Ms. Mason keeps her in the cellar. Alone in the dark, her mind fills in the possibilities of what could be just out of her sight in a way she’d thought she’d learned not to. It’s the smell, she thinks, so different from the cold concrete scent of The Hole back in Boston. The smell here is sickeningly familiar, the same musty damp of that cellar in Colorado, mold and rotting wood and dust, and without the ability to look for herself, her brain keeps telling her that Joel is just out of sight, bleeding out on a mattress, infection creeping through his bloodstream, trying to take him from her. They’d spent an entire night that way, not that Joel remembers it. The snow had picked up in the middle of the night, blocking every little bit of light from the moon, and she’d been too afraid of someone seeing them to use her flashlight. She’d crouched there in the dark for hours, tracking every single one of Joel’s rasping breaths, keeping a hand on his chest to feel the rise and fall, her single touchpoint in a world of complete darkness.

She knows it’s not true. She knows she's in Jackson. She knows Joel is safe and whole. This isn’t a dark cellar in Colorado with enemies all around her.  She knows it. But the smell and sensation of earth above and around her is too deeply written in her brain, burned in like a brand. After a while, she thinks she starts hearing things, whispers, shuffling, hands reaching for-

She jumps when the door opens, early evening light filtering in. 

Forcing herself not to scramble out on all fours with haste, she climbs back out. 

Ms. Mason asks her some things, and she thinks she answers. The woman seems pleased enough to leave her alone without striking her again, at least. She stands in place a long while after she’s gone, unable to put action to thought enough to make herself move. Finally, though, she manages to get herself home, walking into the empty house, locking the door, grabbing Joel’s jacket off the hook, and laying down on the couch with it wrapped around her like a blanket. 

*

She wakes an unknown amount of time later to hands on her, and she’s about to reach out and start clawing when the sensation of the arm behind her back registers, familiar as her favorite flannel at this point, and it lets her calm enough to pick up the scent of Joel’s soap and the faint trace of wood that lingers on him these days. Before she’s even consciously registered that it’s him, her body has already untensed, not needing her input to know that she’s safe. 

“Just me, kiddo,” Joel says as he lifts her. He’s still in his patrol clothes, and the smell of horses and leather and sweat still clings to him, but she can still pick out his Joel Smell beneath it all, and she focuses on it, trying to make it chase out the horrible mud smell of the cellar, inhaling deeply like she can clean her lungs with it. 

She curls herself up against him and lets herself be carried to her bed. He sets her down gently and goes to leave after an affectionate touch to her head, but then he pauses, frowning, and steps closer again, taking her by the chin carefully and tilting her face. She allows it, meek both from surprise and trust, but she doesn’t know what he’s noticed until she feels a gentle finger trace over her cheek where Ms. Mason hit her earlier. She panics, flailing for an excuse, and she uses the first one that comes to mind. 

“Ah, shit, did it bruise?” She asks, and his frown deepens as he lets her go, sitting on the edge of her bed. She resists the urge to curse. She’s too tired for a “sitting on her bed” level of interrogation. “Roller skates are fucking hard, man.” 

“Roller skates?” He asks, and she can hear the doubt. 

“Yeah,” she says with a heavy sigh that would usually make him tease her for being dramatic. “Some kids were skating after school. I asked to try and totally ate shit like five seconds in.” 

“You hurt anything?” He asks. He reaches for her head. “You didn’t hit your head, did y-” 

She grabs his hand and lowers it, keeping possession of it when she does. 

“I was wearing a helmet,” she says. “No worries. Just did some damage to my moneymaker.” 

Joel blinks, and then seemingly despite himself, he smiles slightly, amused the way he always is when she pulls out one of the little bits of Before knowledge he didn’t know she knew.  

“And where’d you learn the word ‘monkeymaker’ from, young lady?” 

“Dude, I know tons of shit,” she says with a dismissive wave of her free hand. “Just like I know that skating is not for me, apparently.” 

“Well, dude,” Joel says, and Ellie can hear the affection in it, “be careful, alright?” He rises, and she lifts her head subtly in a silent request that he grants, kissing the crown of her head before squeezing her hand and pulling his free. “You ain’t got much going on up in there in the first place. Can’t risk you knocking the rest of it loose.” 

“Asshole!” She calls after him, flinging a pillow at his head. 

When he’s gone, she feels a weird mixture of relief and disappointment. 

Turning and burying her face in the jacket she’s still wearing, she does her best to ignore it. 

*

Ms. Mason put her in The Hole on Thursday, the last day of Jackson’s school week, and on Monday, she plays sick, unable to stomach the idea of risking another school day in a row in that darkness, worse even than the one in Boston because she could at least reach blindly and feel that there was nothing else with her in that small space. 

“Rise and shine, kiddo,” Joel says, knocking at her door, but his smile fades when he sees her still in bed but awake. “Hey, you feeling okay?” 

“Kinda shitty,” she says as pathetically as she can, ignoring the way it feels to lie to him. She hates doing it, but she just can’t face the possibility of The Hole again today. She just can’t. 

At once, Joel crosses the room, pressing the back of his hand against her forehead and cheek. When he does, he frowns and checks again. 

“You do feel a little warm,” he says, sounding like he’s mostly talking to himself. 

She doesn’t respond, just really hopes she’s hidden the extension cord to her heating pad well enough for him to not notice. She fakes a shiver–she’s had plenty of practice, after all, from being so cold constantly in the hospital–and Joel immediately tucks her comforter up around her better. 

“When’d you start feeling bad?” He asks, sitting on her bed at her hip and rubbing a hand up and down her arm through her blankets in a gesture obviously meant to comfort her. “You did go to bed pretty early last night.” 

She shrugs, trying to look very pathetic and sick and keep-home-from-school-able. She sees Joel hesitate for a moment, and she knows what’s going to come next even before he says it. 

“You want me to get someone from the clinic? That Ginger woman was pretty nice.” She could almost laugh at the way he says that last bit, the same way she’s heard parents in the dining hall try to coax their little kids into eating vegetables. “Could get her to stop by, just-” 

“No,” she says, quietly but firmly, and when she sees him about to insist–his worry about her health going up against his wish to give her what she wants–she gives him her most pathetic puppy dog eyes, the ones that have a 99% efficacy rate of getting her her way with him, the ones she only pulls out when she really needs them. “Please?” 

He sighs, but then he reaches up and squeezes her arm gently before rising, leaning over to kiss her head. 

“Alright, kiddo,” he says softly. “Get some rest.” 

*

She milks her sick routine for three days before she can feel the strain she’s putting Joel under, and then she makes herself knock it off. She still doesn’t want to go to school, but she can tell her being out of commission again makes Joel nervous, especially since she won’t agree to seeing anyone from the clinic. She’s also making him miss work because he insists on staying home with her, and the combination of having to play sick all day and the guilt of making him get behind on the house he’s helping fix finally makes her suck it up and experience a miraculous recovery. 

“Hey,” he says, surprised when she goes downstairs the morning of the fourth day. “You feeling better, kiddo?” 

“Yep,” she says, popping the p. She shoulders her backpack, and he frowns. 

“You sure you’re up for that?” He asks, moving to lean against the doorway as she sits on the hall bench to put her shoes on. “Ain’t no harm in taking another day. You can start back on Monday.” 

She wants it so badly she can almost taste it, having a whole week without having to interact with Ms. Mason. 

But she also has the growing unease that putting off doing her work is just going to make her consequences even worse when she does finally return. 

“I’m good,” she assures him, and under the guise of letting him check her for fever, she puts herself in range for a kiss to her head, a little something she can take with her even when she’s back under Ms. Mason’s switch. 

“If you’re sure,” Joel says, a little uncertainly, and then he does press a kiss to her head before cupping her face in a hand and angling her head up to look at him. “But if you get there and change your mind, tell Ms. Erin I said you could go home, alright?” 

How novel, still, getting to use one adult’s instructions against another’s. Back in FEDRA, it had been understood that all adults were supposed to present a united front. If Ellie had tried to say that one had contradicted another, it would have been trouble for her. 

But here, Joel’s choices about her beat everyone’s else, and she wraps the security of it around her like a blanket before she makes herself give him a smile. 

“Will do.” 

*

Ms. Mason only puts her back in The Hole a couple times after that, both for only the length of her class time with her, but unable to stand even that, always so convinced she’s back in that basement in Colorado, she starts carrying a small flashlight in her jacket pocket. 

It works great until she forgets to take it out when Joel’s doing laundry one day. 

“Hey.” 

She looks up at the sound of Joel’s voice, barely resisting the urge to wince when the turn away from her desk pulls at her back. Ms. Mason had drawn blood today, and though they’ve scabbed over now, they’re still tender. Joel holds the flashlight up, a bemused smile on his face. 

“Y’all got a spelunking club at that school?” He asks, clearly teasing her. 

She can feel her face heat with humiliation. It’s beyond childish to be scared of the dark. She should be able to take The Hole on the chin and keep going. 

(But it’s also so fucking easy for her brain to fill in the blank spots of what could be in the dark with her.) 

“Just being careful,” she answers as lightly as she can. “You never know when you might need a flashlight.” Despite her attempt at sounding casual, Joel’s expression goes a little more serious, and he enters her room, sitting on the edge of her desk. She barely resists the urge to fidget under the scrutiny. 

“Everything okay with you, kiddo?” He asks in a gentle tone that makes her want to spill her guts immediately. 

The thought of how ashamed she would feel at admitting she’s bad enough at school to need to be hit so often, though, stops her. 

“Fine,” she says, giving him a smile. “Everything okay with you? That Earl guy still getting on your nerves?” 

“God,” Joel says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Swear to God he goes to work every day just to come up with a new way to do something wrong.” 

She pretends she isn’t at all disappointed that he was so easily switched over to a different topic. 

*

She worries, in her other classes, about how the other students are going to respond when Ms. Mason’s system is spread through the school after the other teachers see how effective it is on her. They’re soft, these Jackson kids. They laugh in class and make jokes with teachers. They all but lounge at their desks, relaxed and comfortable. They leave their papers and books in messy piles on the floor instead of tucked neatly right under their chairs in a large to small stack. They raise their hands to ask questions even when a teacher has already given an explanation, and they make guesses even when they’re not sure of the answer. They commit half a dozen punishable infractions each class period, and Ellie feels more and more wound up with each one she notes. She almost wants to warn them, wants to let them know to practice the way they’ll need to behave in the future. She doesn’t want to watch any of them get punished more than they have to. 

But she also doesn’t have the heart to tell them what’s coming for them.

*

Selfish as she knows it makes her, she’s relieved when Ms. Erin tells her that a new addition to Jackson–a girl named Belle, who’s about her age–will be joining her to “play catch up” with where the math classes are at in Jackson. Her family was part of a different settlement before, but they’d had a family member here in Jackson who had convinced them to make the move, and for her own part, evil as she knows it makes her, Ellie’s just glad for a second person to take some of Ms. Mason’s focus off of her. 

“Pretty cool, I guess,” Belle says when she walks with Ellie to the classroom. “Having a class for just the two of us, right?” 

She almost pities the girl for her optimism. 

*

When Belle gets a problem wrong and Ellie hears the ruler come down on her back, she moves her head to subtly exchange a commiserating look. Belle’s been nice all day, and she hates it for the girl that her punishment started so quickly in the class. It had been the only comfort to offer someone back in the QZ, this little exchange of “can you fucking believe this?” eye contact. Open defiance or compassion would only make it worse for both of you, but a quick look-

She blinks in surprise when Belle stands so abruptly that she knocks her chair back. 

“Sit back down,” Ms. Mason snaps, and in her head, Ellie begs the girl to just do it, to not make it worse for herself and for Ellie, too. Ellie’s had her periods of rebellion, but Jesus, Belle’s old enough to know when to keep her head down. There’s no one else here to take the teacher’s attention off of them. If she doesn’t-

“Do not,” Belle snaps, grabbing Ms. Mason’s wrist when she goes to hit her with the yardstick again, “touch me.” 

And to Ellie’s absolute shock, her classmate storms out of the room. 

*

Ms. Mason brings the yardstick down on her back fifteen times before the door to the classroom opens, the woman’s hand raised for a sixteenth. 

Ms. Erin and another teacher from the lower levels stands there, faces more serious than Ellie’s ever seen them. When they take in the scene before them–Ellie hunched forward, braced for the lashes to get them over with, Ms. Mason with her arm drawn back to deliver them–their faces go what Ellie could almost call dangerous. 

“Ellie,” Ms. Erin says, voice very soft despite the hard look on her face. “Come here, sweetheart.” 

Ellie flicks her eyes back to Ms. Mason, wondering if this is a test, wondering if they’re trying to see if she’ll disobey like Belle. She’s reluctant to risk making things worse for the other girl by being the only one who can stay in her seat and listen, but she also can feel a hot trickle of liquid down her back that suggests that Ms. Mason has drawn blood again, the woman not pulling her blows at all today. 

“Is there a problem?” Ms. Mason asks, voice deferential. She holds her yardstick in front of her with both hands, every inch a subordinate awaiting orders. It's her second of the day after she broke the first one on her fifth hit.

Ellie hates her so fiercely that she can almost taste it. 

“If you’re here about the other girl-” Ms. Mason starts, but Ms. Erin cuts her off, voice like acid. 

“Be quiet,” she snaps, sharp as a blade. When she looks back to Ellie, her face gentles, and her tone is kind. “Ellie, sweetheart, grab your things and go with Ms. Una.” She tilts her head to the teacher, who gives her a small smile. 

Ms. Mason puts a restraining hand on her shoulder, squeezing so hard that Ellie can’t help but lean into it, trying to lessen the pain of the hard fingers digging into soft tissue. 

“I’ll thank you,” Ms. Mason says, voice slightly more officious now, “not to undermine-” 

In the blink of an eye, Ms. Erin is across the room, snatching the ruler out of Ms. Mason’s hand and all but throwing her other one off of Ellie. Ellie watches, stunned, as the woman forces Ms. Mason back, crowding her away and standing between her and Ellie. She turns her head at movement in her peripheral vision and sees that Ms. Una has followed and is gathering up her things from their perfect, orderly stack right under her chair. 

“C’mon, honey, let’s get outta here,” the woman says, and her accent is so similar to Joel’s that Ellie moves at once to obey, purely from habit. She pauses when she’s on her feet, though, and turns back to Ms. Mason and Ms. Erin, half-expecting them to be looking at her with distaste for failing the test. A soft gasp makes her turn back to Ms. Una, but doing that makes Ms. Erin gasp, and she feels wildly absurd, trying to glance between both of them at the same time. At the touch of fingers to her back when she’s looking at Ms. Una, she spins, lips drawing back in an automatic snarl, but it’s just Ms. Erin, who looks horrified before her expression goes vicious, turning back to Ms. Mason, who is watching the whole thing with a cooly placid expression, the only sign of her anger lurking in her eyes, which stare at Ellie with pure hatred. 

“Una,” Ms. Erin says, “take her to my office, will you? Get someone to bring her dad.” A dark look at Ms. Mason. “And a representative from the council.” 

Ellie, bewildered, obeys the gentle arm that settles around her shoulders and lets herself be guided from the room. 

*

Ellie waits in Ms. Erin’s office for an unknowable amount of time, feeling sick with anxiety. She’s refused to see anyone from the clinic without Joel with her, but she doesn’t even know if he’ll be willing to go down to the clinic with her when he gets dragged here for no reason. She has no fucking clue what in the fuck is going on, and she replays the day in her head over and over, trying to work out what in the fuck she could have done wrong. FEDRA believed in collective punishment, but surely Belle’s rebellion couldn’t include her, could it? She’d had a note in her file as a troublemaker, but that hasn’t followed her here, surely? There’s no way they could-

She jumps when the door opens hard enough to rebound off the wall, and she’s scarcely had a moment to register who made such a dramatic entrance before she’s being lifted onto her feet and folded into familiar arms, surrounded by the smell of Joel, familiar and comforting. As soothing as it is, she can’t help but hiss and jolt forward in reflex when his hand presses too hard on her back, and at once, he lets go. She tries to open her mouth and apologize for making him interrupt his day for this, but Joel isn’t looking at her. 

He’s looking down at his hand, red and sticky with her blood. 

She feels her shoulders draw in, face heating and ears ringing. She wants to get ahead of this, wants to explain exactly what happened to have made her deserve something like this. She’s always tried so hard to be good for him, and she’s humiliated and angry for him to find out like this that she’s still the same fuck-up that she was back in Boston, no matter how hard she’s worked at being better.

“It was Belle,” she says at once. “I think-I don’t-” She fumbles. She doesn’t want to make things worse for the other girl, but she’s also pissed that weeks of her best behavior have been all fucked up in a single day because of her. “I didn’t think Ms. Mason hit her that hard, but she-” 

Ellie doesn’t get a chance to finish explaining before they’re joined by Tommy and Maria, and it’s only the fact that they’re blocking the door that means she doesn’t just make a run for it at that point. 

She’s startled when Joel puts an arm around her, tucking her against his side, and she leans into it automatically, just in case he did it on reflex and is about to take it away when he remembers he’s only here because of her bad behavior, deserved or not. Joel, though, just squeezes her gently, the same way he does when the world goes fuzzy because something’s reminded her of Silver Lake or the hospital. 

“I,” Joel says, voice deadly calm, “am going to kill that woman.” 

Ellie turns her head up to look at him, confused beyond belief. 

“Who?” She asks, frowning. 

Joel looks back at her, still obviously angry but softening when he faces her. 

“Ms. Erin didn’t hear what happened,” she says on her best guess. Killing seems like a far stretch for interrupting her class, but it’s the only thing she can make make sense. The explanation, though, just makes Joel look confused. 

“Let’s get all of the facts before we do anything hasty,” Maria says, but she looks pissed, too, and now Ellie really can’t make it all fit. 

“Oh shit,” Tommy says as an introduction into a third branch of the conversation, because why should anyone make sense apparently, and she follows his gaze to see that he’s looking at the back of the chair she was sitting on. 

The chair that’s now smeared with her blood. 

She grimaces, feeling stupid. She’d thought she was sitting up straight enough, but she must have leaned back a few times, enough for her shirt to touch it. 

“Shit,” she says, moving back to the chair and lifting the edge of her shirt to wipe at it. “Sorry, I-” 

Joel’s hand closes around her wrist gently and pulls it away. His face looks almost…pained? 

“Leave it, baby,” he says quietly. 

Head still spinning while she tries to make sense of what the fuck is going on, she obeys, unsure what else she’s supposed to do.