Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ellie,” Marlene says, removing her glass from the desk and folding her arms on the wood. Ellie scowls- she’s been trying to spill Marlene's drink by kicking the desk ever since she got called into the woman's office. “Listen to me.”

“I’m literally listening,” Ellie says in an exaggerated valley-girl drawl. The woman opposite her doesn’t quite crack a smile. “What were you saying?”

Marlene sighs. “I was telling you that you are not allowed to keep firing security personnel assigned to you. Or threatening restraining orders against them when they don’t leave.” 

“Maybe don’t assign me a fucking idiot, then.” Ellie resumes her (now pointless) kicking. “I’ve seen exhumed presidents with more protective ability than Michael.” 

Maybe this is unfair; her current guard isn’t as awful as Ellie’s comments both behind his back and to his face would convey, he’s just so nice . On his first day he called looking after Ellie an ‘honour and a privilege’, which made her laugh until she realised he was serious and now somewhat offended. In her defence, being the glorified babysitter of the president’s bastard child has and will never warrant that description- he basically just hovers around her for the duration of rare moments outside her room, protecting Ellie from exactly zero threats to her safety. Also, the guy never stops smiling (creepy), and in her repeated tests of his reflexes (throwing things at him when he gets too close) he has proven alarmingly slow.

“Michael served in the military for eight years.”

Ellie narrows her eyes. “I’ll text my dad to give him a fucking medal.” 

The sarcasm of that statement doesn’t take much effort. Not only would Ellie’s father literally rather die than give her anything she asked for, she also doesn’t have his number on the White-House-approved cell she carries around- they haven’t interacted enough for her to slip in a question about his contact information (not that she frequently wants to text him, anyway). His dislike of his youngest child is no secret to Ellie or the staff here; she’s wondered why he bothered pulling her out of the foster system at all when the paternity results came out. According to Seth, the awful PR guy who consistently smells of mothballs and mold, it’s a worse look for a president to have an abandoned bastard child than one he’s ‘integrating into a healthy family unit’. 

“Would you work with me on this, Ellie?” Marlene is saying, arms folded across the desk. “I’m not trying to ruin your life here, kid, but you gotta be mature about this. Act like an adult.”
Ellie huffs. “I’m not dealing with Michael unless you agree to lobotomise me first. Then at least we can be on the same level.”

Ignoring this, Marlene goes on, “I’m prepared to give someone else a shot. But no guarantees you’ll like him any better.”

“I’ll take anyone except the secret seventh Brady Bunch kid.” Ellie says. This, like the majority of everything she says, is ignored. Being the kid of the president got old really quick when she realised everyone still treated her like dog-shit.

***

The new security guy is decidedly not the slick-back-blonde-hair-body-like-a-fucking-Dorito Michael. He’s older, verging on old but not quite at the stage of becoming an issue for the not-dying deal. He’s taller than Michael was, both a blessing and a curse since that lengthens the height difference between Ellie and him considerably. Greying hair, broad shoulders, scruffy almost-beard, permanent frown-lines in his face, plain shirt and dark jeans. Michael favoured black t-shirts and pants, like he was KC Undercover. Cliche asshole. 

( “His name’s Joel Miller,” Marlene had said. “He’s very good at what he does, but he won’t appreciate being assigned to the kid of the president. He’s used to more complex work.” 

“Sucks for him.” Ellie had replied .)

Now, she can see that Marlene was right; this guy is not happy to be here. She makes a big show of looking him up and down again, then raises her eyebrows. 

“I’m Ellie.” She says pointedly. Not that she’s into all the pretentious bullshit about status here, but he’s supposed to introduce himself first.

“Joel.” He responds flatly. He’s Texan, which as far as Ellie’s concerned is an accent-imitating jackpot. She can’t imagine what the fuck he’s doing in Washington, though, and as one of the chief security guards on the White House’s team. If she was from Texas she’d want to stay there and spend all her time going to rodeos or cooking ribs.

"Can I call you Joe?"
"No."

"Jojo?"
"Absolutely not."

There's a brief silence.

“You’re gonna stop me from getting shot in the face?” 

“That’s the job.”

They’re down near the kitchens, because Marlene’s a fucking stalker and she knows that Ellie only ever eats late at night or early in the morning so she doesn’t have to deal with anyone else.  This time, she was delighted to make the entire journey without some steroid-pumped security guy behind her, but that joy has now been decidedly interrupted by the arrival of his replacement. 

“...Great. I’m gonna combust if I don’t eat soon, so this has been a beautiful moment but I’ll see you when you’re needed.” Ellie tries to move past him towards the kitchens, but he’s following her as soon as she takes a single step. Motherfucker knows the drill. Annoying. “I can go into the kitchens by myself.”

“No, you can’t.” He says. Ellie turns and crosses her arms. He looks down at her like he’s imagining hitting her with a tennis racquet. “I go where you go.” 

“Sure- like, generally. What difference does a wall make?”

“How many gallons of blood the cleaners are wiping off of it.”.

Ellie snorts. “Dramatic, dude.”

“Go.” He orders. Ellie’s pretty sure he’s not meant to be telling her what to do unless it’s life-or-death, but she’s also running on yesterday’s cornflakes and doesn’t have the energy to argue before another meal. 

***

The rest of the day passes about as pleasantly as can be imagined when you’re professionally tethered to the word ‘irritable’. Ellie’s met with nothing but short replies and disapproving silences when she suggests fun, friendship-building activities like testing out Joel’s bullet-proof vest or ending her father’s presidency by taking a picture of him in the shower and sharing it on her non-existent social media pages (Joel’s favourite phrase ever, it seems, is “I’m not your friend.”). 

At one point, she’s bored enough to actually get some of her schoolwork done, with Joel lingering silently outside her bedroom door. It isn’t unusual; Ellie spends a lot of time in her room, since Michael never really had a reason to go inside, given the lack of windows. He remained in thehallway or actual bedroom- the formal once that gets Christmas decorations put on it for photographing and has its sheets changed once a week despite their utter lack of use. Ellie’s bedroom is allegedly only a closet, but the still-packed moving box of clothing fits in one corner and leaves plenty of room for her to spread out, so the space is used to house a desk, a few posters of Ellie’s favourite bands and comics (none of them presidential-playlist approved) and drawings that she thinks are less shitty than others. There’s a fold-out bed and Ellie’s only picture of Riley taped to the wall above it, as well as an ironic campaign sign for the leader of the other party in the last election. If they took a video of this room for her father’s Christmas decor tour, Ellie’s pretty sure she would be assassinated. Inside job, of course. 

Ellie isn’t stupid and she’s not always an asshole either so she tells Joel about the second bedroom- just so that he doesn’t say she’s been kidnapped or something dumb. To her relief, he doesn’t pretend to be interested in her music taste or whoever that girl on the wall is; instead, he nods once and turns back to study the opposite wall of the hallway in true robot fashion. 

Unfortunately for Ellie, her schoolwork proves spectacularly boring (duh), so she only spends about twenty minutes on it before giving in to the allure of listening to increasingly terrible music in an attempt to get a reaction from her new guard. No dice on Witch Doctor by Alvin & the Chipmunks, 0r that song about gummy bears, even after the fifth time she plays it. Bored again , Ellie lies on her bed and tries to count to a million, but gives up at fourteen because there's a tiny spider on her wall that she has to rescue before the evil cleaners come and kill it. After that, she tests her own genius by designing complex mathematical equations, but they prove just as mind-numbing because she can’t even solve them.

Ellie’s Very Extremely Worthwhile passtimes get old, fast. There’s nothing to do and her mind is drifting to places she’s determined it won’t go, parking lots and the smell of bile, so she forces herself out of bed and into the hallway- even her emotionless security guard has to be better than nothing. 

However, in a truly shocking turn of events, Ellie’s likelong streak of terrible luck finally decides to relent; it’s not Joel out there, but Tess, the night guard.

“Hey, kid.” 

Tess is cool in the way nobody else in this house is. She’s the only adult in Ellie’s life who gives her some level of dignity about choosing where she goes and what she does (although she does draw the line at parkour down the stairs), and the feeling of being trusted makes Ellie trust her , an incredibnly unique sentiment these days. It helps that Tess brings her tubs of pasta at one in the morning, she supposes. Who could’ve guessed that treating Ellie like a person might make her act like one? 

“How’d your first day with Joel go?” She asks. Ellie looks up at her between mouthfuls of carbonara and tries to express her annoyance with just her eyebrows. “Huh. That bad?”

Ellie swallows just enough pasta to reply, “Have you met the guy? Pretty sure you guys need to have an are you a robot? quiz at the start of job applications.”

Tess snorts. “He’s serious, but he’s good at his job. Better than Michael, yeah?”
Ellie has to agree. “Have you worked with him, or something?”

“Yeah, we did some shit on the same team before coming here.” 

“Like, dark shit? Like war crimes and stuff?”

Tess rolls her eyes. Ellie is very adamant about wanting to know about her past jobs, even though all of them are apparently ‘classified’. That’s probably just another way of saying they aren’t as cool as they sound. “No.”

“Annoying. So, what’s his deal?”
“His ‘deal’?”

Ellie widens her eyes expressively. “He’s a total prick. Up his own ass, or something.”

Tess shrugs. “That’s for you to find out, kid. Not my business.”

“But you said you knew him!”

“I do. But the Joel Miller I get isn’t gonna be the one you get- you aren’t his coworker.”

Ellie wrinkles her nose. “Can you at least tell me if he’s gonna snitch about me smoking?”

One of Ellie’s only conversations with her father that was civil for more than a minute ended with her trying to convince him that legalising weed for fourteen-year-olds would be a good campaign promise. He didn’t agree, and the conversation landed Ellie in a four-day drug education course against her will. It hasn’t quashed the habit to any meaningful degree, though her supply is dwindling dangerously. 

“I’ll ask him not to, but no promises. You know I don’t like it either, right?”

Ellie sighs. “Yeah, yeah. It’s only on special occasions. Birthdays and tea parties.”

“Uh-huh.” Tess says sceptically. “Well, kid, as fun as this conversation is, I’m meant to tell you to start sleeping.”

“Well, I’d better go do that. Since it’s an order, and all.” Ellie salutes sarcastically, disappearing into her room and drawing rude pictures of her father to distribute around the house tomorrow.

Chapter Text

It’s not until Ellie wants to go outside the boundaries of presidential property that she discovers how much of a dick her version of Joel Miller is. 

She’s awake later than usual, content to skip breakfast and enjoy a few hours of peace in bed by herself- that is, until someone decides that the door to her dressing room-bedroom is a fucking drum set and it’s time to re-enact Whiplash . 

“What?” She opens the door with a huff, still dressed in a Spiderman t-shirt and pyjama pants. Joel Miller glares down at her. “I need a fucking stepping stool if this is gonna work.”

“You told me we would leave for your outing at ten o-clock this morning. It is now eighteen minutes past.” It’s one of Ellie’s small victories that she’s convinced him not to use twenty-four hour time in the six days he’s been working as her bodyguard. One of very, very few victories. 

“Have you ever heard of going with the flow?” 

“No.” He replies flatly.

“Figures. Look, dude, I’m gonna go out at some point, but it’s the fuckin’ weekend. Chill.” 

“You’re leaving in the next eleven minutes or you’re here for the day, Ellie.” Joel says firmly. She frowns at him, crossing her arms.

“You can’t force me to stay here.”

“Actually, I can, if I consider anything to be a security risk.” There’s a note of smugness in his voice that Ellie hates. She considers the outcomes of kicking him in the shins. “There’s a car waitin’ for you downstairs. Don’t waste time.”

“I haven’t even eaten breakfast.”

Joel throws a muesli bar at her head and leaves. 

***

In another instance of Ellie’s spectacularly wonderful luck, her asshole of a security guard has decided to travel in the front seat of the car, totally interrupting the banter she has going with her driver, Tommy (technically Tomás, but he prefers the nickname). 

“Where are we going, sunshine?” He asks her as she slides into the backseat. Ellie pretends she has laser vision and stares at the back of Joel’s headrest.

“Ask him. He’s got the whole fucking day planned, apparently.” 

She’s allowed to lie for reasons of irritation, Ellie’s decided. She’s the one who planned out where they’re going, but as far as she’s concerned, Joel can be the one to go to the trouble of telling Tommy. She wrangles her headphones on and slumps as much as the backseat allows. 

“Seatbelt.” Comes her current least favourite voice from the passenger seat. She levels Joel with a scathing stare, and he returns it with a raised brow, which makes her feel warm and even more mad than she was. Ellie clicks her seatbelt into place as slowly as possible and flips him off, muting the remainder of their journey with angry music.

The park isn’t very far away, and Ellie’s out the door the minute Tommy pulls into his usual parking spot. She throws a ‘bye’ over her shoulder and hopes that a patch of quicksand will swallow Joel up before he can get to her, but no such miracle occurs. 

“Damnit, Ellie!” He swears, jogging to catch up and getting in front of her. It catches Ellie a little off guard; she’s used to being grabbed and yanked, not herded. “You don’t run off like that. Ever . Understood?”

“Fuck you, I can do what I want.” It should be the truth. She’s the first fucking kid! Or, technically, third, but surely she’s highly-ranked enough for a little respect.

Joel takes a step forward. “Do you want me to take you back home? Because I can and will.”

Not my home. Ellie resists the urge to shove him and juts her chin out defiantly, refusing to move. “You work for me , dipshit. You don’t get to push me around.”

Joel's eyes flick upwards, and he breathes carefully out of his nose. “I work for Marlene and your dad. The way I see it, they don’t give a crap if I ‘push you around’ so long as you’re alive. So, I’ll ask you again: would you rather continue this little outing, or drive straight back home?” 

It’s probably the longest consecutive string of words he’s uttered since arriving. Too bad it’s also the most dick-ish he’s ever been. Ellie huffs, bordering on stomping her foot, and retries her laser-eyes strategy. Joel remains impassive.

She wishes that she was tall enough to land a punch on his face. She wishes she was tall enough not to feel like a fucking toddler whenever she's being told what to do, like she's just petulant and whiny instead of an actual human being who might just be having a shitty time. The only person who ever treated her like she actually had thoughts and feelings that mattered is gone, and now Ellie's dealing with Secret Service agents who feel like they absolutely have to ruin every second of every day she's alive, especially this new guy who’s full of shit and hates her before she’s even been her most hateable self.

She wants fucking out . She wants to walk through the park like a normal teenager and talk to her friends (or friend, singular- who's counting?) on a phone that she is allowed to have because there's no security risk to it, and she doesn't want to be told what to do by Joel fucking Miller. She wishes she'd never agreed to that paternity test, never believed promises that life would be better this way. 

“... Asshole .” She says eventually, then pushes past him and walks (at a barely reasonable pace) to her willow tree by the more quiet part of the park. Joel keeps up easily; his legs are regrettably longer than Ellie’s, and she’s not in the mood to get told off again for speeding up. 

The glazed wooden bench is waiting for Ellie under her tree, where she left it. There’s a part of her that always worries it will have disappeared the next time she comes here.

Joel, to Ellie’s immense satisfaction, looks confused when she sits down. 

“Waiting for someone?” 

Ellie pulls her feet up onto the bench and opens the comic book she’s brought with her. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple of Russians who said they’d trade vintage Levi’s for state secrets. Vlad and Olya, they’re lovely.” 

Predictably, he doesn’t find her joke as witty as it was. After another totally paranoid check of the area that several other members of Ellie’s detail are already in, Joel stands a few feet away from the bench and (creepily) watches her while she flicks through her comic. It’s hard to ignore for more than a few minutes.

“Stop staring. It’s rude.” 

He raises an eyebrow. “Letting you get kidnapped would be even ruder.” 

“Funny.” 

Joel gives her a long-suffering look and doesn’t offer a reply, but Ellie’s read through her comic three times now and she’s just bored enough to keep pressing him. 

“So.” She begins, undeterred by the total lack of interest in the look he sends her way.  “You’re southern.” 

He takes a moment to answer, probably debating how much trouble he would be in for stabbing the president’s daughter with the branch of a willow tree. “...Yes.” Is the astute reply he settles on. 

“What’s that like?” 

“Fine.”

“Really? ‘Cos you’re in a shitty mood all the time, and I was wondering if it had something to do with the whole cowboy thing. Like, did you ever have beans by the fire, or fall in love with a rodeo guy called Jack Twist but then have to marry Michelle Williams?” Sometimes Ellie doesn’t really know where she’ll end up when she starts a sentence. Usually it’s not in Brokeback Mountain territory. 

Joel gives her a Secret Service Glare (not entirely ineffective in shutting her up, to her dismay) and doesn’t bother to answer that. Ellie swings her legs over the edge of the bench. Her ex-stylist said it was a ‘bad look’ for Ellie to have stained shoes, so she makes sure to step in mud and wet grass when she can.

“If you’re silent I’m assuming it’s the truth.” She says, turning around to stand on the bench and begin hauling herself onto the lowest branch of the tree with both arms. She’s just shimmying forward on her stomach when she feels a hand close around her ankle. 

“Absolutely not.”

Ellie kicks a bit, but he holds on tight and catches the other one in the process. “ Dude . I’m not gonna die from falling out of a tree.” 

“Get down, Ellie.” 

“No.”

She thinks this would feel a little more like an actual conversation if she could actually look at Joel instead of having her ass in his face. She shuffles backwards and he lets go to allow her to stand back on the bench- Ellie determinedly does not look embarrassed.

“Don’t be a dumbass.” He says, when they’re facing each other again. She revels in looking down on someone, for once, given the lack of other opportunities to do so in her daily life. 

“Thanks for the life advice. I’ve climbed this tree like, a million times, it’s not a big deal.” Ellie says. Joel is unimpressed. “Come on, man, are you seriously gonna stop me from ever having any fun?”
“Breaking your leg falling from a tree ain’t fun. Find somethin’ else to do.”

“I am. Going up the tree in the first place is somethin’ else,” Ellie imitates, to keep the ‘please’ out of her voice, well aware that it probably wouldn’t fare well for her whole ‘I’m in charge’ idea with Joel. But she has to get up there. “Come on. I’ll be extra careful.”

There’s a pause, and she determinedly holds eye contact until he sighs heavily. “You have five minutes.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Ellie smiles, tucking her comic under one arm and propelling herself onto the lowest bough with renewed gusto. She gets a few feet in the air before Joel finds it within himself to ruin her peace once again.

“No further than that.” He orders. Ellie flips him off, high enough now that he can’t do anything about it, and goes even further up the tree to the spot she’s been aiming for all along.

There’s a hollowed-out part of the trunk that used to belong to a bird, but Ellie and Riley claimed it as their own the minute there was no trace of the pigeon or her family. For years, through different group homes and dodgy placements, they could reliably find news of each other every couple of days in the tiny postbox- new phone numbers, borrowed CDs, half-eaten bags of candy and letters detailing the most recent news from wherever they were. It all lives here. Lived here, now that Riley’s gone.

Ellie straddles the branch under the hollow and pulls the comic out from under her arm, carefully dog-eared in sections that Riley would’ve liked. There’s a packet of chewing gum in the back pocket of her jeans that she leaves as well, since Riley always liked the strawberry flavour more than she did. She knows that it’ll be here when she comes back next weekend, just like the previous few months’ worth of stuff, but it’s nice to pretend. The muted sun coming through the pale green of the willow’s leaves and Riley’s initials scratched into the tree-trunk next to Ellie’s feel like a time before yesterday, a day of carving RA and EA into the wood and digging out splinters afterwards . 

It’s stupid, Ellie giving herself the same second initial as Riley, but ‘Williams’ had just been what they put on the paperwork until a while ago. It hadn’t tied her to anyone real, not the way she was tied to Riley- so she’d wanted them to be the same in some way, however immature. Even when things changed, the DNA tests and the media scandal and a new tether to someone else, someone important because another asshole thought it would ruin a campaign, Ellie could come up here and trace their shared initial and feel the tug of a string between her and Riley.

For the record, it did technically ruin the campaign- that is, until four years later, when the worse parts of Ellie’s records had been wiped from the face of the earth and she was legally the daughter of a presidential candidate who had embossed ‘E.W’ on a suitcase she never used, when there was no going back to being Riley’s anymore. And on speeches about what a joy it was to ‘finally understand the meaning of family’, and how grateful she was that a man like her father could show her the true meaning of American family values, Ellie told the world she was Ellie Williams , Williams, Williams . And those speeches, and that name, share a file in Marlene's office with Ellie’s birth certificate, which very much has her father’s signature on it, so he knew all along that she was out there but only decided that she was his when it suited him. She had this tether all her life, and he decided to reconnect their names just when Ellie was starting to find family in someone else. 

EA and RA. Ellie presses the soft skin of her palm to the carved wood until it hurts.

***

When she comes back down the tree, sans comic-book, Joel is silent. He looks up from where he was staring at the tiny silver plaque on the bench and waits for Ellie to land on ground-level before saying anything. 

“Bird-watching?”

She looks at him, cocking her head. “Huh. He jokes.” 

Joel doesn’t confirm this, muttering something into a radio which is probably only there to look cooler. “Tommy’s waiting with the car when you’re ready.”

Ellie had previously thought that she and Tess were the only people who called her driver that nickname- in a rush of vindictive irritation, she hopes he'll call Joel out on it and it'll be really embarrassing.

“That almost sounded like you were asking for me what I wanted to do,” She marvels, heading away from the tree and the bench without looking at the silver plaque. “Yeah, we can go back.”

Just to be a dick, Ellie takes the long way around the boat sheds, but Joel doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s new to the park? Still, it seems odd that by her third wrong turn he still hasn’t become angry at Ellie for dawdling so much. Out of options, she heads back to the parking lot, still waiting for a comment about wasting time or being a brat. He remains silent.

A few feet from the car, Ellie can’t take it any longer. “You’re being weird,” She says, hands on her hips.

Joel stops short and frowns extra seriously. “I’m not bein’ weird.” 

Embarrassingly, she’s pleased that he’s actually replied. She’s getting tired of everything going on inside her head, all the things she’s seeing in this park which make her remember what she doesn’t want to. Any conversation here is positive. “You definitely are.”

Joel's jaw flexes. He looks from Ellie to the car and back at Ellie again. “Weird, how?”

“Not being a total dictator about where I’m going, for one. I took like, fifty wrong turns and you didn’t say shit.” Ellie supplies. Joel gives her a blank look. 

“It ain’t my decision where you walk, so long as you stay within the perimeter of the park.” He says, like it’s obvious. 

“But you said Tommy was here.” 

“...When you’re ready.” 

Ellie narrows her eyes at him. “I thought you were uptight about timing. You literally almost broke down my wall this morning because I was three minutes late, so-”

“Eighteen minutes. And your wall is fine. Tommy’ll wait for us.”

Unsure of how to continue, Ellie heads towards the car. “ Definitely weird.” She says over her shoulder. “Did the Secret Service know you were this weird when they recruited you from cowboy school?”

She swears Joel’s lips twitch, but any potential amusement is gone as he opens the door for her to get in and takes his place in the front seat beside the driver. 

“Hey, Tommy.” Ellie says to the rear-view mirror. He grins at her. 

“Hey, honey-girl. Good day?” He is the only person on the entire planet who’s allowed to call her shit like that, and usually not in front of other people, but Ellie’s pretty positive Joel isn’t the type to follow suit. She lets it slide. 

“It was okay. Went birdwatching, saw some blue-footed boobies and Eurasian blue tits.” She waits for Joel to react, but he’s looking out the window. Tommy laughs. 

“Sound like my kinda birds,” He says, pulling out of the carpark and heading back the way they came. “You got school this afternoon?”

“Fu- I mean, heck no.” Ellie emphasises. 

“You are allowed to swear,” He reminds her. “Ain’t no rules against it.”

“Don’t encourage her.” Joel says, barely audible from the front seat. Ellie can’t tell if he’s genuinely annoyed or the words are just a force of habit, but either way she makes a mental note to be a lot more crude around him this afternoon. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Tommy says, glancing back at Ellie. Finally , someone who thinks Joel’s as insufferable as she does. “As if you can talk.”

Ellie goes to laugh, but is distracted by the alarming familiarity of that phrase. Since when has Tommy known Joel long enough to say shit like that? Her newfound alliance with her driver slips away as quickly as it appeared.

She spends the rest of the drive in silence, contemplating whether she should bring it up. By the time she’s decided not to, they’re pulling through security at the gates and Ellie’s lying down in the back seat in case any tourists have designed cameras that can see through tinted windows. She’s aware there’s not much to see, actually, from a famous-person standpoint. Her two older half-siblings are the darlings of alt-right media, respectively off giving speeches to that effect or pursuing a degree in Latin, and Ellie’s moment in the spotlight passed with the scandal of her heritage. Thank fuck for that.

***

Inside, the peaceful darkness of Ellie’s room seems more tempting than ever, but Joel stops her halfway to the stairs with a pointed clearing of his throat. She frowns.
“Lunch.” He says, by way of explanation. 

“Oh, right. Yeah, whatever, take your break.” She nods, somewhat nonplussed. It’s not like he needs her permission to take time off. Besides, she has a hankering for Billy Idol and pants more comfortable than jeans, so there’s really no time to waste.

To her immense displeasure, Ellie’s provided with only a few moments of peace before Mr Fucking Drum Soloist appears again. That definitely wasn’t thirty minutes. 

She opens the sliding door of her closet-bedroom and is met with Joel Miller bearing something that looks suspiciously like a burrito. “Hi.” She says, peeling off her headphones. “What, is there a bomb threat or something?”

Joel gives her a look that says not funny , but she’s sort of serious; can’t actually imagine any reason for him to give up his precious half-hour of break other than life-or-death situations. 

“Lunch.” He says again, even more cryptically.

Ellie frowns. “Did your brain melt , dude? Why are you communicating like a caveman? Lunch, yes, fantastic pronunciation. Go enjoy it and leave me alone.”

Joel rolls his eyes and thrusts the plate forward. “ Your lunch, dumbass. It’s past noon and you haven’t eaten more than a muesli bar all day.”

Ellie tries very hard not to feel stupid. “Gotcha.” She says, taking the plate. To be honest, she’s not really feeling hungry (she never is after going to the park), but when someone brings you a burrito it’s a bit of a dick move to reject it. “Um. Thanks.” 

At least Joel looks almost as uncomfortable with this interaction as she feels. “Sure.” He says, rolling his shoulders back slightly and glancing over Ellie’s shoulder at her room. She rushes to slide the door are far closed as it can go with her body wedged in the gap. “So, are you also eating, or just watching me like some kind of freak?”
“I’m takin’ my break. You’ve got someone outside, tell them if you need anything.”

“Like a Diet Coke to go with this lovely meal?” 

“Not my business.” Joel turns and leaves. 

Not that it’s a Thing, or anything, but that’s the first time he’s actually bothered to tell Ellie when he’s going on break. Before now, she’s always just found another Secret Service agent standing outside her room or down the hall where Joel otherwise is, and that’s been her notification about his departure. It’s odd that he felt the need to let her know. 

Ellie knows when Joel comes back, because she can hear him speaking lowly with the guy posted in the hallway. They always do this- always have to ask if anything’s happened, if she’s had a heart attack or been kidnapped out of the window while the other was on shift. She waits to hear the other guy moving away until she sticks her head out the door and waits for Joel to notice her. It doesn’t take long, what with him being professionally trained to do just that. 

“What is it?” He says. Rude . 

“If you had to say that I was an animal, what animal would I be?” Ellie asks casually. Joel looks a little repulsed.

“Why?”

“Buzzfeed quiz. It’s really important.” She smiles innocently. Ellie is about half a minute away from finding out which presidential candidate she is, and if she gets her father she thinks she might drown herself in the indoor pool- easy, since she can't swim- and then have Joel perform CPR on her so that she can drown herself in the outdoor one as well. 

Joel stares at her for a long moment, as if he can telepathically force her into a vow of silence. No dice. “That doesn’t fall within my jurisdiction.” 

Ellie groans. “And the fucking burrito did?”

Joel scowls in her general direction. “Making sure that you don’t die is my job. Starvation is a cause of death for nine million people every year.”

“Is that even a fact?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how weird it is that you know that?”

“It’s my job.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely your job to be a death-rate encyclopaedia. Freak .” Ellie grimaces, disappearing back into her room again. What the fuck is a Secret Service bodyguard good for if he can’t even help her answer Buzzfeed quiz questions? 

(She ends up getting some obscure, failed candidate on the quiz anyway, so it’s a total bust.)

Chapter Text

David arrives two days before Easter, on the falsely-advertised ‘Good’ Friday. When Joel asks, Ellie blames her foul mood on the death of Jesus.

Her godfather brings his troupe of cult members with him, but Ellie’s slightly satisfied to hear from Tess in a late-night bitch session (Tess calls it a 'situational debrief') that they weren’t approved to stay in the White House with him, as had been assumed. They’re being put up in some fancy-ass hotel instead. David is not happy.

Ellie, for her part, tries to carry on moping in a normal way rather than a David-is-visiting way, but her plans are thwarted by Joel coming to check on her (ruin her life)  in the early evening.

“Kid?” He says, instead of knocking. He’s stopped since she said it gives her a headache, even though she was being sarcastic, which definitely doesn’t make Ellie like him but it’s a nice break from all the stuff that was making her actively dis like him. “Ellie!” 

“What, dickhead?” She slides her door open irritably. “I was listening to a good song.” 

Joel has a weirdly tentative look on his face. Ellie is immediately freaked out.

“Your dad’s asking for you.” He says, like he’s telling her she has cancer. 

To be fair, Ellie knows she’s slightly more averse to any kind of contact with her father (or his weird soggy-cardboard family) than most normal teenagers, but Joel seems to have assumed that it’s something super dramatic and serious- not that he’s asked many questions, a uniquely positive trait he shares with Tess. Honestly, the worst that’s happened between Ellie and her dad are a couple of slaps across the face that she was probably asking for in the first place- most of the time when she’s being an asshole, it’s on purpose. Nothing she didn’t go through a million times over in foster care.

“Aren’t you meant to call him ‘Mr President’, or something?”
“Well, you’re meant to call me by my name, but you’ve settled for somethin' a little more offensive.” He retorts mildly. Ellie feigns shock. 

“What, 'dickhead' isn't really your name? Oh, god, there’s been a terrible mistake in my application for your medal of honour.”

“You're not funny.”

“I beg to differ. Um, why does Mr President want to talk to me?” 

“Your godfather’s visiting, like I said this mornin’.” Ellie’s stomach sinks into her feet. Her face feels hot. “Apparently he wants to see you, have dinner with your family.”

“Not my family.”

“Alright.” He steps back, directing her towards the hallway with one hand. “Whoever they are, they’re waiting for you in the dining room.”

“Well, I can’t wear this.” Ellie stalls. 

 Joel gives her a look that says fine, I don’t give a shit, and tells Ellie she has two minutes to change. She takes several more, finding a pair of patterned jorts that induce a headache when she looks at them for too long. They’re pretty terrible- even Ellie can admit that, but that’s also the point. Maybe she’ll be sent back to her room for the rest of the evening (or the rest of her father’s presidential term- dare to dream).

Her guard scans her up and down as she joins him in the hallway. “Wear socks. It’s cold.” Is the only commentary she receives on her outfit. She elects to ignore this, he gives her a disapproving look, and they begin walking towards the dining room. 

“If I got frostbite on all of my toes, would you have to amputate them?” 

Joel’s sigh lasts about three hours. “No, you would go to a medical professional.”

“What if there was a blizzard? Or, like, a tornado, and we couldn’t leave?”

"That is extremely unlikely."

She gives him a look. "Pretty sure you're paid to have a plan for every hypothetical catastrophe. Right?"

“We would turn the heating on and you wouldn’t get frostbite in the first place.”

“Electricity’s out.”

“There are several back-up generators.”

“They were stolen.”

“That won’t-”

“ Every hypothetical.” 

Another sigh. “...In the impossible scenario where you had frostbite on every one of your toes, I would not amputate them, because that is not how to treat frostbite.”

“How do you treat it, then?”

“Submerge in a warm- not hot, warm - bath of water for at least thirty minutes until the digits are thawed-”

“Digits?”

“Toes.”

“Oh. Continue.”

Joel does. “Until the toes are thawed, then bandage individually and repeat treatment twice daily until we see improvement. Use painkillers as necessary.”

Ellie contemplates this. “It would take a lot of bandages to wrap each of my toes individually.” 

Joel looks at her sideways. “Yes, it would. I’d prefer if you didn’t get frostbite in the first place.” 

Ellie scoffs. “Duh.” 

She can hear David downstairs, talking about something boring (probably God-related). Ellie’s efforts to delay her imminent arrival by sliding down the bannister are quickly halted by Joel, who lifts her off it and places her on his other side. He doesn’t even bother with a lecture. Ellie’s chest is feeling increasingly too small for her lungs.

“What if the frostbite got infected?” She demands, swivelling to face him outside the dining room as Joel goes to open the door. He only looks mildly vexed. 

“We would go to a hospital.”

“There’s a blizzard-tornado happening outside. You’re really gonna fight through that?” Ellie frowns sceptically. Joel pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“I would cut off your legs at the knee.” He says, finally. The security guy standing outside the dining hall looks at them. 

“Really?” Ellie asks, excited. 

“No.” 

Joel pushes open the door to the dining room, and Ellie is greeted by the whole of the first family (plus David) staring back at her. God, even his smile gives her the creeps.

He's a pastor- a famous one- who tours the country in private jets sponsored by the company belonging to the president’s wife for a lot of money, presumably talking about God but managing to drop a whole lot of bullshit about vaccines and abortions and gay people. Ellie wonders if the bible would say anything about the fossil fuel emissions from his travels, but she’s sure David will have a passage to defend himself if she asks- not that she’d ever engage in conversation with him by choice.

“What are you wearing ?” Her half-sister demands. It’s an odd thing to judge Ellie for when she’s dressed like a news anchor to family dinner.

“I thought I looked nice,” She pulls at her t-shirt, pouting sarcastically. 

David laughs because he’s a suck-up freak. “You look lovely as ever, Ellie. Have you got a hug for your godfather?”

“Not unless you want a nasty case of molluscum contagiosum.” Ellie replies, eyeing the bowl of chocolate eggs on the glossy wooden table. She looks up, satisfied when she sees the confusion on his face. “Contagious rash. And I know how you are about seeking medical attention, so I’d steer clear.” 

Joel clears his throat from the doorway- it’s pretty obvious code for shut up . Ellie ignores him; David recently preached prayer and self-reflection as a remedy for a kid’s leukaemia diagnosis, so he definitely earned that one. 

“Oh, I’ll survive it,” He stands and approaches Ellie, who counts the (many) seconds until he releases her from what his probably the tightest hug she’s ever received. She stays stiff and still to make the experience as unpleasant as possible, but David keeps his hands on her shoulders even when he’s pulled away. “Your dad tells me you’re a little troublemaker, Ellie.”

She hates the way he says her name, like it’s a joke. She hates the smell of him, the feeling of his hands on her. She hates the way he says your dad and little troublemaker. 

“Okay.”

“That true?”
She stares at a spot on the table while he flexes his fingers over her right shoulder. “I dunno.”

“Talkative, isn’t she?” People laugh. Ellie’s stupid half-family. She wishes she could jam a peace sign into David’s eyes. “Are you excited for Easter? I brought a bit of chocolate for the family- now, I know how you girls get about watching your figures, but-”

“Careful, Dave, you can’t say things like that these days,” The president comments like he’s the funniest man alive. “They’ll have your head for that kind of talk.”

Ellie pretends that she’s a Secret Service agent like Joel, not here to listen to what they’re saying, just here to do a job. She just has to stand here and get through this, no matter how many times David’s spindly white fingers squeeze her shoulder. She counts; one, when he laughs, two, a longer one, when her father describes the wine of the night, three, four-

David lets go, finally. Ellie sits down next to Christine- her stepmother- who, like her half-sister, has chosen to take a place further from David than what is necessary. She hates that they seem to notice him the way Ellie does, feel something worse under his smile, and still make her spend time with him whenever he’s here. So much for female solidarity.

Christine is wearing one of the latest dresses out of her failing fashion collection. She wrinkles her unwrinkle-able nose ( botox on botox on botox ) at Ellie’s clothes. “That shirt is filthy.”

“It’s a design choice, I think.” Ellie examines the offending orange stain, which she thinks might be from soda but could also be something else entirely. “Keeping me humble.”

“Certainly looks humble,” Her half-sister scoffs.

“ And it’s all second-hand,” Ellie agrees gleefully, enjoying the way the women’s eyes twitch at the news. “ Super sustainable!”

“You should learn to present yourself with elegance,” Christine advises primly, “It’s the only way to be respected as a woman, Ellie.”
She swallows any retort to this, choking on her water as David’s hand brushes the back of her shoulders in passing. He politely swaps seats with Christine before beginning his long-winded and self-congratulatory grace. 

“-And a special thanks for my special goddaughter, Ellie,” He says at one point, which is just about exactly what she needed to hear to lose her appetite completely. Ignoring her food, Ellie endures hours of polite conversation swamped in the smell of fish and wine and chocolate mousse, bouncing her right leg under the table. David, now beside her, periodically bumps his knee against hers and presses it there until she shifts away again. Ellie closes her mouth and bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood.

***

Joel follows a short distance behind Ellie until she’s back in her room, after finally being given permission to leave by her father. She lingers in the doorway and twists her fingers together, face heated with a humiliation that built all the way up here. There’s something embarrassing about Joel witnessing the way she is around the first family, around David. She’s smaller and more pathetic; now, he’ll finally realise what a weak person she is, and if Ellie were in his position she’d never let herself live it down. All that false bravado, that snark, hiding a silent, feeble kid .

“...You alright?” 

She looks up at him. “Uh-huh.”

“Seem real quiet.”

Ellie searches for the mocking in his tone but it escapes her. She wraps her arms around herself. “So?”

Joel’s dark eyes catch hers, hook her into a staring competition she’s too tired for.  “You, uh- you close with your godfather?”

Physically, yes, when he has anything to do with it. “Not really.”

“How long have you known him?”

There’s something strange in his voice, a tension on top of the steeliness that’s usually there. Ellie tenses. Weak. “Why?”

“Curious.”

She swallows, rambling to supply him with any impression of her other than the one he’s gained from tonight. “What? You’re like, the least curious person I’ve ever met. I’ve wondered if you have clinical levels of narcissism because you never ask me about myself- but apparently you’d need to want to talk about yourself instead, which-”

“Hold on.” Joel holds out a hand, palm up in a stop signal. Is he mad? He’s usually so much more obvious about it.

Ellie blinks. “Yep. Yeah? What’s- what is it?”

“Take it easy for a minute. Your shoulders are up at your ears, girl.” Oh.
“Maybe I’m turning into a hunchback,” She says, but she relaxes out of the unconscious posture.  

“You’re not turnin' into a hunchback.”

"They're gonna send me to Notre-Dame." 

"They're not."

She waves the denial away, still standing in the doorway to her room. After a minute, it becomes awkward, and Ellie thinks that she’s probably going to say something embarrassing if she doesn’t force another sentence out first. “I was wondering something.”

Joel hums to show that he’s listening. Ellie waits for a comment about how he can’t wait to hear what bullshit she’s cooked up now , but it doesn’t come.

“Why do you stand outside my room all day?”

He raises his eyebrows. “I’m your special agent.”

“That sounds way cooler than it is.” Ellie crosses her arms. “When Christine is in her room during the day, her security guards wait for her in another part of the house. That’s what Michael used to do.”

“I am not the First Lady’s, or your former, guard.”

“Lucky you,” Ellie says emphatically. Joel looks away so that he’s not tempted to smile (maybe; the guy has about three facial expressions, total). “But it’s weird, right? Most people just have a guard at night.”
“It’s protocol for the children of a president to be monitored. You’re a special case.”

Something about the way he said it strikes Ellie as odd. Joel is never careful about being gruff or even downright rude, but he’s dancing around something here and she can’t stand it. She hates secrets.

“Not just because I’m fourteen, then.” It’s not a question.

“That’s right.”

“So… why?”

Joel seems uncomfortable, awkward. Ellie wants to hear him say whatever shit he’s thinking; the hot humiliation of the night feels like it will burst out of her, overflowing with each second he spends avoiding looking at her. If she were a little less averse to touch right now, she might elbow him. Grab him by the shoulders and demand answers, now .

“On your file, there-”

“I have a file?”
Joel hums the affirmative, looking less than pleased at her interruption. “You’re one of the first family. Of course there’s a file.”

She waits for him to elaborate. Joel takes a short breath, in through his nose and out his mouth. “I’m not gonna treat you like you’re stupid, Ellie. You know the kinds of things that’ve happened, the situation the goddamn police found you in just a few months ago.”

Ellie’s skin is suddenly tight, a pressure like boiling syrup behind her face. No. Not that. She blinks a few times, looking at her feet so that she doesn’t have to see Joel watching her. 

“That isn’t- that’s not something I want to talk about.”

“I’m not askin’ you to,” Joel replies casually. 

“Then why would you bring it up?” Ellie snaps. God, it’s been months and she’s been able to keep it at bay, keep herself numb by rationing trips to the park and letting her eyes pass over the photograph on her wall like it isn’t there. Why did he have t0- why the fuck would he talk about that?

“I didn’t.” His brows fall into a frown. “You did, kid.”

“That stuff is my business, Joel, not- not fucking yours, or- or whoever !”

“I agree.”

“Stop acting- stop being so fucking concerned, then. God !” 

Ellie can only see what had opened up, briefly, in his face now that it’s closed again. His tone is flat. “I stay outside your room because you are a child who has displayed risk-takin’ behaviours a few too many times. If there’s something you don’t like about it, take it up with Marlene.” 

She stares at him, raw like someone’s come and scratched the scab off the wound she’d been ignoring so successfully. I wasn’t saying you weren’t allowed to stand out here, Ellie wants to say, or I’m the only one who should be angry here, or if you know what I did to Riley that means you know how terrible I am, so why are you fucking here at all, but none of that comes out. “Fuck you.”

The only indication that this makes Joel pissed is, “Go to bed.” 

“You don’t tell me what to do.”

“I do right now,” Joel says firmly. "You’re clearly not in the mood to be civil and I’m no longer feelin’ quite so concerned, since you’re able to keep up that damn disrespect you’re so fond of.”

Ellie huffs. “It’s not disrespectful if you’re an asshole.”

“It is.”

“Isn’t.”

Joel gives her a hard look. “I’m not doin’ this with you. Go to bed, Ellie.” 

“I-” Ellie searches for something that will hurt. It’s harder, since Joel’s refused to reveal anything about himself. “You’re a fucking dick, did you know that?"

"You've managed to mention it a few times."

"You’re so concerned with professionalism when it suits you, but when you have the chance to push around a teenager you do everything you can to make me feel like shit!” Ellie spits. Inaccurate, rude, mean . “I’m a person. I’m a fucking human being and you act like I’m doing something to you just because I’m a job- I didn’t hire you. I would never hire you. ‘Go to bed’- you think I’m someone you can bully just because I’m smaller than you? Stop fucking blaming me for your own shitty personality and shitty job and shitty life, stop taking everything out on me, stop-”

“The way you’re takin’ it out on me right now?”

She closes her mouth and opens it again. “I’m-”

“ Ellie .” The way he says it is different now, but his eyes are still cold. “We’re not about’a have the argument you want. I’m serious right now, go to sleep.”

“You can’t-” Ellie silences herself this time, wary of his expression. She doesn’t think he’s allowed to hit her, technically. She also doesn’t think anyone would care if he did it anyway. “I’m not going to sleep. I’m gonna stay up. Fuck you.”

It’s stupid and childish, because apparently Ellie’s stupid and childish. Instead of affirming or denying this, Joel nods once and turns to face the other end of the hallway, leaving Ellie to yank her sliding door shut as loudly as she can. 

*** 

The glitchy old phone Ellie’s allowed to own doesn’t offer a broad range of services beyond texting, calling, and playing Snake. She managed to hook it up to her school computer a while back and download as many songs as she could, the angriest of which she now blares as she paces her room.

Her conversation-argument-tantrum-whatever with Joel was remarkably unsatisfying; she’d hoped his general level of grumpiness would blow up into a boxing match (or at least some yelling), but the guy is weirdly restrained. Maybe that’s why he’s constantly on the verge of yelling- he never lets it out.

To her dismay, Ellie feels something approaching guilt in the pit of her stomach. Joel didn’t actually do anything to deserve the way she just acted towards him; even his usual attitude doesn’t warrant her being a total asshole to him. If he’d reacted badly she could’ve justified it, but he wasn’t even as mad as he’s been in the past. All she’s proven is that on top of being a silent, flinching coward whenever she’s around the stupid family downstairs and her godfather, she’s an attempted bully who yells at her security guy for doing his fucking job. 

She should be reversing the treatment she gives both parties; Joel would undoubtedly prefer the quiet person she becomes around the family, and they all deserve to be yelled at far more than he does. Especially David. Ellie just wants him gone .

Almost three years ago, when the adoption papers were signed (not that Ellie actually moved in with the family until it was necessary from a PR perspective), David was made her godfather. He was there in the courthouse, and for a minute Ellie actually thought maybe he was okay; he was the only one to smile at her the entire day, and he asked about school and her friends. But then they left the building to a wall of flashing cameras, all hungry for the President’s ‘long-lost’ daughter accompanied by her brand-spanking-new American family, David kept his hand on Ellie’s waist all the way to the car. She was twelve. She still remembers it so vividly- it was the first time she’d ever thought of herself as not-a-kid, in a bad way. He’d held her like she was too old. It was the first time she’d properly wanted to disappear in a permanent way, so he could never hold her like that again.

A hand on a waist isn’t evidence of anything, Ellie knows. If there was evidence of something, she doubts anyone would care- everyone in her life has made it perfectly clear that they don’t give a shit about her feelings or desires, all answering to someone higher up the food chain. Privately, she was put in a protected group home because her father was travelling, and David would come and visit every few months to ‘check on her’. They sat in rooms with the door closed and Ellie would feel convinced something awful was about to happen, only it never did. She doubts herself plenty- maybe he’s just a touchy guy- but she knows how it makes her feel, and Ellie’s been able to trust her gut over anything else for the majority of her life. 

She wants Easter to be over. She wants to be taller. She wants Riley.

Joel will usually text her if he’s finishing his shift, but tonight the clock ticks over into the early hours of the morning and nothing comes. Eventually, Ellie’s slumped frowning turns into a slumped half-sleep at her desk.

Chapter Text

Ellie Williams must be the luckiest little girl in the whole world, because her stomach decides to wait an entire twenty minutes into the drive to her father’s speech before emptying itself all over Tommy’s back seat. 

She should’ve known this was coming; she’s only spent the whole morning being an absolute dick to everyone she sees because she’s felt so ill. She can’t even supply a good excuse; it’s just heavy nausea at the back of her throat, nothing anyone reasonable would be afraid of. Ellie’s mind won’t allow her to be reasonable today.

Emetophobia, someone on a youtube video supplied a while back- unhelpful, since they didn”t bother saying how to stop it, which seems like the important part. It’s left her sweating and trying not to hyperventilate as she swallows and prays and swallows and prays for it to go away. David would be proud of the latter part- not exactly a comforting thought.

“Goddamnit,”  Joel says helpfully from the front seat. “Tommy, pull over.” Ellie promises to spend the last of her energy on launching herself through the windshield if he so much as whispers an ‘I told you so’. The bastard’s been insisting that she needs to throw up all morning, oblivious to the fact that she would literally rather do anything else. 

There’s nobody alive who knows that she’s this afraid of vomiting, mostly because the only person she would’ve admitted it to died around the same time her phobia arrived. It’s a stupid fear, anyway, childish and pathetic and weak. Ellie’s sort of glad it never surfaced when she was in group homes, snot-nosed and surrounded by kids who would’ve laughed at her for finding it hard to breathe through nausea. She keeps her head down- Tommy and Joel won’t get the chance.

“Jesus,” Tommy keeps his eyes on the road, but his voice is much more sympathetic than Joel’s had been. Ellie definitely knows which one is her favourite- she’s actually tried to encourage him to get Joel moved off her team, because he must feel threatened by the presence of another southerner, but that just made him laugh. “You alright?”

She groans a response, shaking all over and feeling cold sweat staining the armpits of her revolting pastel outfit. It's all sweat-shop fabric and tailoring that only suits the unique plastic surgeon-induced hourglass figure that the First Lady has. It looks awful on Ellie. Her half-brother helpfully informed her this morning that half a dozen tabloids are saying she’s the worst dressed member of the first family, evidencing this point with images of Ellie on the White House lawn this morning, her green pants baggy around her hips and too tight around her legs. Joel’s response to her question if anyone has ever looked worse than she does was a grunt-  effective, if not necessarily uplifting. At least he's more honest than the stylist who said they'd 'finally found a look that just pops'. 

Now, Ellie pants into the space between her knees and tries not to smell what’s just come out of her. “I’m fine. Don’t stop driving.”

Joel tuts. “Who’s in charge here, kid? Two guesses.”

“I’m right anyway,” Ellie breathes. “My dad’s gonna be pissed if we stop. And I’m fine.”

Joel’s silence is somewhat vindicating until Ellie realises it’s because he’s texting someone. “We’re cleared to pull over for fifteen minutes. Tom, take the exit off-” Ellie tunes out.

She’s actually feeling less and less fine, and the proof of it comes out a few seconds later when she starts retching again. There’s barely anything in her stomach to throw up at this point, and the painful spasming of her throat and abs makes Ellie want to cry even more, which would seriously knock down her cool points in front of Tommy. 

A particularly violent gag has Ellie lurching forward towards the glove compartment, her forehead crashing into- no, not the hard plastic, but Joel’s hand instead. He’s covered it so that she won’t hurt herself. Yeah, because that’s his fucking job, you weirdo. 

His hand is cool on her forehead for just a second too long, until he pushes her back gently. “Careful.” He says in a weird voice. Ellie can’t quite summon the strength to retort.

They pull over, and another SUV pulls in behind them with the rest of Ellie’s security detail. They’re in an unfamiliar parking garage, and a few of the guys go immediately to shut off the entrances while Joel gets out and opens Ellie’s door. She sways in her seat and swallows saliva.

“C’mon, kid,” Joel reaches forward and holds Ellie by her biceps, moving her slowly towards him until she’s sitting with her legs hanging out of the open door. She bows her head and wishes she could pass out, but there’s more bile rolling around in her stomach and Joel’s hands are burning her where they’ve settled on her shoulders. 

“Smells bad.” She manages- the scent of her own sick is revolting, and she isn’t sure why Joel isn’t walking away to get some fresh air right now. He could; they’re in a secure area, and he’s not obliged to stay this close to her. 

“Sure does. Can you walk a few feet?” For a minute, Ellie isn’t even sure it’s Joel talking- his tone is unusually gentle, none of the flat grumpiness she’s grown used to. It’s not kind, exactly, but it’s… different. Weird. “Ellie. C’mon, I know you hear me.”

“Mm.” She responds intelligently. Joel sighs, which is more normal, and squats so that he’s sort of within her line of vision. His knee clicks- the look he gives her says that he imagined her commentary on that without Ellie even saying anything, which makes her feel a bit better.

“We need to get you in another car, alright? Here,” He presents a cold bottle of water, unscrewing the cap and passing it to Ellie. The loss of physical contact on her arms means that she’s not distracted any longer, and she’s realising how hard it is to breathe with the panic and nausea pressing into her from all angles. “Take small sips, go on.”

“Can’t.” 

Joel’s face blurs a little. It’s a second before Ellie realises it’s from the tears flooding her eyes. Fucking embarrassing. How old are you? She shouldn’t be so upset. People throw up all the time. Little kids in the group homes, babies that were thrust into Ellie’s arms without warning, all the time . She used to be fine about it. Completely fine, until-

A pool of yellow sick around a slumped-back body, not a person not a girl not Riley anymore because it’s dead, she’s dead, and Ellie watched it happen and-

“Hey. Focus right here.” Joel taps Ellie’s chin. She blinks and tries very hard to look at something other than the fresh stain on her pants. “Ellie. Look at me, c’mon.” 

“Can’t throw up again.” She whispers. 

“Because you’re not feelin’ sick or because you’re scared?” 

Ellie frowns and regrets the effort it takes, twisting her fingers into the rigid fabric of her top. “Not scared.” She lies.

Joel pauses. “Right,” He says, “Either way, we need to get you outta this car and into a cleaner one. Can we do that?”

Ellie’s legs feel shaky, weak, but she nods anyway. Joel insists on her sipping the water a few more times before he steps aside to let her out- the sudden loss of something on all sides, the car behind her and Joel in front, leaves Ellie’s head spinning. She decides not to panic, to be tough, but breathing becomes harder anyway as she abandons the security of the last couple of minutes. She hates how it feels to have people watching her. If she throws up in front of them she's going to ask Tommy to hit her with one of the cars.

The walk to the other car feels longer than it should. Ellie determinedly puts one foot in front of the other, but the dark grey of the concrete and the walls and the smell of cars feels like it’s infecting her. It’s making her weaker, pulling the energy from her muscles, soaking up the heat from her body until she’s shivering. 

Riley died in a place like this. Hot concrete, a sunny day, and Riley’s body was cold by the time the police pulled Ellie off of it- like everything alive had been sucked from it while Riley was lying there, choking and vomiting and stiffening. All sunk into the burning ground. Ellie can smell Riley’s death in the unforgiving greyness, can smell the vomit now, too. She wonders if she’ll see the body around one of these cement pillars. Behind a car. 

It’s all too much. Ellie wants to go home to the green, cool park with their tree and the bench and nobody but Riley. Today she’ll stare into the empty faces of thousands of people who hate her, hate everyone like her, and she’ll pretend that they’ve rescued her from her past. And tonight she’ll sleep in a too-big bed in a room without windows- probably denied a few weeks of visiting the park anyway, because she’s making them late- and Ellie will feel too warm and she will suffer for the rest of her life that way. Always over or under-heated, surrounded by flat grey concrete, always on the edge of something terrible. A different kind of nausea.  

Then Joel’s hand is in the middle of her back. “Almost there,” He says, too quietly for anyone else to hear. Ellie stumbles forward. 

When she’s in the car and she’s forced down a bit more water, Joel manoeuvres her knees around to face the front and props the bottle in her lap. Ellie stares at her knees until Tommy gets in the front seat. “I ruined your car,” She says quietly.

Tommy turns in his seat to face her. “Ain’t even mine, darlin’. I’m sure the president's budget can cover a little car detailing.” 

“It’s gross, though.” She mumbles. 

“You’re sick, kid.” Joel says firmly, still standing in the doorway with his hand on the roof of the car. There’s a finality to it that Ellie was expecting- she’d anticipated a little more smugness, given that she’s been insisting to Joel that she won’t throw up for the entire morning. She would’ve been smug, if she was in his position. “Allowances can be made."

Ellie leans back against the headrest and waits until the queasiness has abated. She looks at Joel again, and wishes that there wasn’t guilt demanding to be felt as soon as she sees the concern lining his forehead and eyes. It's gone as soon as he realises she's noticed it, wall rebuilt. “Does this mean you’re over me calling you an asshole?” She asks- not exactly the way do you forgive me for being a dick on Friday was meant to sound, but it’ll do. Tommy snorts. 

“Which time?” Joel rolls his eyes, then takes a couple of steps back and avoids Ellie’s stare so she won’t see him trying not to smile. “Yeah, I reckon I’m past it.”

***

Ellie’s thrown up twice more by the time she gets home that night, but somehow they didn't feel quite as daunting as the first. Tommy bought her a pack of popsicles and a book of puns while her father was doing his buttfuck-boring Easter speech, gifts Joel didn’t approve of but didn’t prevent either. Actually, the two of them were unusually chilled-out, which doesn’t happen a lot. Either Tommy’s relaxed and Joel’s grumpy about something, or Ellie’s said something controversial and Tommy’s worried for her sanity while Joel doesn’t care. After the throwing-up incident in the car today, something shifted (for the two men, obviously). Ellie thinks she’s probably exactly the same and feels totally normal about all of her security guys, including Joel. Definitely no changes there. 

Still, she lets him tell her to walk slowly up to her room, and accepts the medication that he gives her with only a few charming comments reminiscent of David’s anti-vax spiel on the news last week. Before she can collapse onto her bed, Joel stops her.
“Ellie, wait a second.”

“You want to hear more jokes?” Ellie asks. Tommy has incredible taste in literature, it turns out. “We only got to page fourteen in the car.”

“No, I certainly do not.” Joel glares. Ellie smirks- actually having the energy to do so is a relief. 

“You know, since Christine took my phone, you’re gonna have to hear a lot more from Will Livingston.” Actually, Ellie had been pretty pissed about the First Lady’s decision to punish her by taking away her only source of music, just because Ellie ‘ruined’ her outfit (i.e. throwing up on it) and had to stand in the back of all the press’ photos. It had taken a lot of popsicles to feel better about that, and Joel said he would work on it, which helped. Tommy said Ellie could trust him to make good on that promise. “You’re a lucky guy.”

“I will not be listenin’ to anything from that book.” Joel says seriously.

“I’ll throw up on you if you don’t. In fact, I’ll-”

“Ellie.” She falls silent. “We need to talk about what happened today.”

Ellie blinks and cringes dramatically. “My dad’s speech? Controversial, but not his worst. David’s stuff about repenting was still the highlight.” 

“Not about that.” Joel holds up a hand to stop her. “This morning. You woke up sick, and you denied the whole time that you felt it. Why?” 

“Dunno.” Ellie shrugs. 

“Not good enough.” Joel judges (unfairly) of this response.

“Joel, I just… didn’t realise I was gonna be sick. Can’t I ever be wrong?” 

“You can- and often are.” Ouch. “But we both know you weren’t well the entire mornin’, Ellie, so that wasn’t it.” Joel crosses his arms. For the millionth time, Ellie wishes she was his height. “I will put up with some things, but lyin’ ain’t one. You got that?”

“...So does this mean I have to tell you about all the meth I have under my bed?”

Joel’s frown deepens. “Enough. I’m being serious, and you’d better listen. You never lie to me, or tell me that you’re fine when you ain’t. Are we clear?”

Ellie considers rolling her eyes, but that’ll probably extend this conversation and she really does want to go to sleep. “Fine. Yes, clear.”  

“Good. Now, go to bed.”

Ellie starts to go, glancing over her shoulder to ask, “Are you coming to the Egg Roll tomorrow?”

Joel sighs heavily. “ We are spendin’ tomorrow inside, so that you can get better.” 

She stops. “What?”

“You heard me fine.” Joel raises his eyebrows like he’s expecting her to argue, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Actually, this is the closest she’s come to wanting to hug him (not saying much). 

“So… you get to spend the entire day listening to puns?” Ellie grins. 

“No.”

“That’s kinda what it sounded like.”
“I will confiscate that book.”

She tilts her head and tries to look a bit worse for wear. “When I’m sick? You’d do that to me?”

Joel’s jaw flexes. “Go to bed, Ellie.”

Ellie goes to bed.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Joel,” Ellie’s already laughing when she begins. 

“No.”

“How do you organise a space party?”

“ No.”

“...You planet !” She cackles, thwacking the book against Joel’s leg where he stands next to her. She’s generously sitting in the hallway so that Joel can hear Will Livingston’s puns a bit better, although so far he hasn’t been especially appreciative of her considerate behaviour. “Get it? Like-”

“I get it.” 

She looks up and is met with the look of someone trying to resist extreme torture. “I don’t think your job description prevents you from laughing, Joel.” 

“I'm aware of that.” 

Ellie huffs, putting the book down. “Actually, what is your job description? Like, ‘babysitter for the bastard child of the president’?” 

Joel looks at her sharply. “No.”

Ellie shrugs. “So, what was it?”

“‘Agent’.” 

“That’s definitely a lie. This whole truth thing goes both ways, you know.”  

He is unimpressed by her incredible logic. “I don't remember agreein' to that.” 

“It’s ‘cos you’re getting old. Good thing I’m here to help, right? Mutual caregiving, you could say.” Ellie gives him her most charming look and gets to her feet. “I really don’t feel so sick anymore.”

That much is true. Joel said that he thinks Ellie was probably sick with ‘norovirus’, which is just a fancy way of saying she had a stomach bug, and after spending this morning in bed she actually feels almost back to normal- not that she’s planning on attending any of the Easter Monday festivities. Reading puns and eating the rest of her popsicles beats seeing David’s face any day.

“Good. That was the point of staying inside.”

Ellie nods her agreement, and there’s a short pause. She opens the book of puns again. “What do you call a-”

“Enough of those,” Joel says without a lot of sensitivity. Ellie frowns.

“It’s a good one!”
“No, it isn’t.”

She sighs. “You’re a prejudiced guy, you know thaty?”

He grunts. 

“Can you teach me how to fire a gun?”

Joel gives her a Look. “You’ve asked me that already.”

“ Nice , your memory’s getting better by the day! Keep at it, gramps. You've got this,” Ellie says enthusiastically. “You know, if you taught me how to shoot a gun I would probably be less likely to die.”

“Uh-huh,” Joel rolls his eyes. “The hundred kids who die from unintentional firearm injuries every year in this country would disagree with you.” 

He has not abandoned his plight to convince Ellie that he knows every depressing death-themed fact there is. “The disapproval of a hundred dead kids isn’t exactly gonna affect me in real life, dude.” Joel fixes her with a real glare, this time. “Too far?”

“Too far.” 

“My bad. But-”

“Leave it, Ellie.”

She huffs and begins to open the pun book again. “A photon checks into a hotel-”
“There wasn’t a job description on paper,” Joel interrupts. “I was asked to take the role and I agreed.”

“Because of the good pay?”

“Sure.”

Something in Ellie’s gut twists at his tone. She shakes it off- it’s probably just her stomach being weird from yesterday. “Nice. And now you get to hear amazing puns on top of that.”

“Lucky me,” Joel says, with all the joy of a death row inmate. 

“Did Marlene recruit you?”
He nods. “That, she did.”

“From where?”

He leans against the wall and scrubs a hand over his face tiredly. “Another job a few years back. I worked with Tess in special ops.”

Ellie nods. “Cool.”

“Not cool. Dangerous.” 

She gives him a look that she hopes conveys how much she thinks Joel is the lamest secret-agent person ever. “So Marlene plucked you from like, a war-zone?”

Joel is unreceptive to the look, unfortunately, and continues to be unenthusiastic. His commitment to being grumpy and stoic should be studied in labs. “No, I was done by the time I agreed to meet her. She found me back home through my brother. He left the task force earlier than Tess and I, got injured.”

“Did he die?” It occurs to Ellie that this is a pretty insensitive way to ask that question, but she knows there’s something Joel has lost to make him this way. Albeit very reluctantly, she’s recognised some of the same shit in her own behaviour that she’s seen in his. 

“Obviously not." He says. Ellie wonders if she’s suddenly suffering memory loss for some other time they’ve apparently discussed Joel’s personal life, but there’s no point getting into it right now.

Ellie wrinkles her nose. “Marlene annoys me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Hardass for no reason.” Joel hums- because he doesn’t want to agree with Ellie, she assumes, or because he’s taken this valuable opportunity to reflect on his own hardass-ery and change his ways. “I think you should teach me to shoot a gun.”

“The answer is no, Ellie.” 

 ***

What Ellie lacks in charm she makes up for in persistence- that’s what the lady at an one-night foster placement said to her a few years ago. It feels remarkably true, now, as she holds Joel’s (regrettably unloaded) gun in both hands and points it at the other end of the conference room. It’s bigger than she thought, and a little heavier; the lecture she earned from Joel when she tried to hold it with one hand and immediately dropped it on the floor was almost enough to make her abandon the endeavour entirely.

“Like this?” She pretends David is standing down the other end of the table and feels tempted to pull the trigger, just to imagine what it would do. Joel interrupts that fantasy pretty quickly.

“No. You hold the gun like that, you’ll hurt yourself and others. Finger off the trigger.” 

He adjusts her hands, tapping her elbows when she locks them straight. 

“You need tension in your arms, but don’t lock ‘em.” 

“Why not?” 

“Your aim’ll get unsteady. See how it’s wavering?” Ellie nods. “You don’t want that. It’s the difference between hitting and missin’ a target.”

At least, despite all the boring-ness, Joel knows his shit. Ellie does as he says and feels steadier, like she could really hit something. “Nice.” She says, narrowing her eyes and staring down a portrait of a dead guy on the wall. He looks vaguely similar to the person she’s imagining. 

“ Off the trigger.” Joel moves her fingers again. 

“If I don’t learn how to hold it when my finger’s on the trigger, how the fuck am I meant to shoot anyone?” Ellie looks at him. 

“You’re not meant to shoot anyone,” Joel reminds her. “You’re not a member of the Secret Service.”

“Maybe I’m a really, really good agent and you haven’t figured it out yet.”

“A really, really good agent would know to keep her damn fingers off the trigger.” 

Ellie groans, but obeys. There’s a fine line between funny-because-he’s-annoyed Joel and very-very-not-funny Joel, the latter of whom is massively into giving Ellie lectures and hard stares.

“Have you ever killed someone with this gun?” She aims it at the ceiling, then at the marble bust of a president from a thousand years ago. Joel wraps a hand around the barrel and pushes it down, giving Ellie a disapproving glance before he answers.

“I have not.”

“But you have killed someone.”

Joel gives a grunt which signals an overwhelmingly affirmative answer, then takes the gun from Ellie and stows it back in his belt. “It’s time for dinner.”

He puts his hand on Ellie’s back to guide her from the room, something he only started doing yesterday. It’s not as terrible as other ways people- David- touch Ellie. In fact, she finds that feeling Joel nearby, just a little way behind her, can be comforting, in a non-specific-to-him way. Like how things were yesterday, how Ellie felt better with the walls of the car around her. It’s probably nothing. She’s reading too much into her own feelings. It’s fine , is the point.

“You know, I’m not gonna be freaked out if you did kill someone,” Ellie comments on their way to the kitchen. “It would actually make me feel safer.” That’s not technically true. Ellie’s degree of feeling secure each day mostly depends on how much she has to endure the results of her paternity test.

Joel seems to know this, and he answers anyway. “I am prepared to kill people to protect-” He pauses. “-To fulfil the requirements of this job. It would not be my first time.”

“How many people have you killed?”
He’s silent for a minute without seeming very angry. “There are some things I’d prefer to keep to myself, Ellie.”

Ellie curses her lack of tact. “Shitty question?”

He looks at her. “No, just not one I’m gonna answer. Alright?”

“Alright.” Ellie nods, and hopes he’s surprised enough at how respectful she’s being about this that he won’t deny her next request. “Can I have your gun for my birthday?”

Joel doesn’t bother to reply to that one, pushing Ellie towards the kitchens. “Be back in fifteen minutes, kid.” 

Ellie mock-salutes him. He’s finally letting her enter rooms by herself, a welcome reprieve from the hovering he favoured in the first few weeks on the job. The evolution was potentially delayed when she snuck into a meeting room and played explosion sound-effects on a speaker, but the point is that she's allowed now .

She’s expecting Théo, the chef that Christine imported for his expertise in calorie-less meals that don't taste that way. He's not terrible; usually he makes a separate meal for Ellie and the other sane members of the household (a minority), and he taught her how to call her father several mildly offensive things in French.

However, in a truly rare unlucky moment for Ellie, she is instead greeted by the sight of David leering at her- two Davids, actually, with his face reflecting up at her from the stainless steel countertop where he's resting his forearms. She freezes.

“Ellie.” He says, standing up straight. “I thought I heard you coming down here- you’re chatty when you’re around that guard of yours, aren’t you?”

“Where’s Théo?” She demands flatly. 

David puts both of his hands flat down on the countertop. “I don’t know. What is it you need, Ellie?” He keeps saying her name like it’s something he has over her. Ellie wants to leave, but if she goes out there empty-handed Joel will think she’s a complete coward and he definitely won’t let her use his gun when it’s loaded. David’s just a guy . He’s just some weird fucking guy who her dad keeps around- it's not like he could actually do anything to her.

“I’m just getting my dinner.” There has to be something stored, she reasons. Théo meal-preps like a crazy person. Ellie forces her feet forwards, sneakers squeaking on the clean floor as she makes her way to one of the huge refrigerators against the wall. The cool rush of air raises goosebumps on her skin.

“What, you’re not eating with the family?” David's breath is hot by contrast, startling Ellie with its sudden proximity to the back of her neck. She tenses- he's so close that she'd be pressed against him if she tried to move backwards. He’s too close. Too fucking close. It occurs to Ellie that she could scream, but the thought is immediately followed by the knowledge that men like David enjoy that shit. They enjoy scared little girls, enjoy having some kind of fucked-up power over them. She knows the type.

“No.” She says tightly, knuckles white where her hand is closed around the door. “I’m not.”

“Why not?” 

Ellie strains to see the food in front of her, to notice something that she can grab and leave. It’s all a fluorescent blur. “I’m hungry now.”

He says something else, something revolting, but it’s lost on Ellie because one of his hands leaves its spot on the door above her own- caging her in- and grazes her lower back. It’s only when Ellie realises that it’s moving downwards that she reacts, a strained, pathetic sound escaping her throat. She whirls around, knee jerking upwards in a move she practised a million times in a million group homes. It’s not as hard as it should be, her balance broken by lack of space to move into. It’s enough to distract David, though, enough for Ellie to roughly push his arm away from where it’s blocking her exit, rushing anywhere but here. 

David, quicker than it's fair for him to be, realises where she's heading. He grabs Ellie’s bicep and yanks her back so hard that she trips and crashes painfully against the bench. His pale, watery eyes are wide and flickering somewhere between fury and glee. Which is worse? Which is worse? Which is worse?

“Don’t be afraid, Ellie.” David says with those same wide eyes and yellowing teeth. Ellie twists and squirms in his hold, eyes watering with the pain in her ribs and arm.

“Fucking- fuck, let me go !” She shouts. As soon as she raises her voice, David releases her, panting slightly as she jerks away and runs as fast as she can out of the kitchen. She thinks he might be laughing, but she doesn’t look back. Doesn’t look anywhere, really, until she finds herself running face-first into an unusually soft wall. Not a wall . Joel. 

“I said fifteen minutes, not fifteen seconds. No need to run.” He says, pulling her away from his chest. His thumb grazes the spot where David was just holding her, and Ellie thinks she might scream so she presses both hands over her mouth and holds her breath until it hurts. Joel lets go and bends down, deep brown eyes searching Ellie’s face.

“What happened?” 

Ellie can’t answer. She shakes her head. They have to go. 

Somehow, that’s a message Joel receives, because he stands up straight again and steps aside. “Upstairs. Let’s go.” 

That’s one order Ellie is only too happy to comply with. Somehow, in a blur, they get back to her room and Joel doesn’t stop her from slamming the door behind them. 

She presses her forehead against the painted wood, finally breathing properly. Fuck. Fucking fuckfuckfuckfuck. The floor welcomes her descent, and Joel sits on the four-poster bed while Ellie places her palms flat to the carpet.

“You don’t have to stay here.” She says finally. “I’m cool.”

“Seem real cool.” Joel agrees sarcastically. Ellie glares. “You gonna tell me what happened back there?”

Ellie shrugs, though it feels like there are about fifty extra pounds weighing on each shoulder. “Chugged milk. Shit does terrible things to my stomach.” 

“Bullshit. Try again.” 

“There was a bomb in the kitchen-”
“Uh-huh. Ellie, the truth.” Ellie must be going insane, because it looks like something in Joel’s face softens. “What’s got you so riled up, kiddo?”

Kiddo?

“David was in the kitchen,” She supplies before she can stop herself. “My godfather.”

The softness is gone. Ellie feels stupid, because listening to a teenager complain about needing to interact with a family friend is so far outside his jurisdiction, it’s a job for foreign affairs.

She’s forces her brain to vacuum-seal whatever just happened into a tiny little package labelled ‘off-putting’, instead of something worse. Ellie can’t do worse, not now. She cuts away the more awful parts of it and sanitises it into an uncomfortable closeness by the fridge, that’s all. David just doesn’t get personal space.

Riley always knew what to say. When there were creepy older guys in foster placements, people who saw the girls as something a little below human, she would make some dumb joke about it and Ellie could forget. David, to EllieandRiley, was a handsy bible freak who they could laugh at and bully behind his back. David to    Ellie    is something terrifying. He was only ever survivable if she had Riley to lean on- the thought throbs like a physical pain.

“Ellie.” Joel says. It’s not the first time he’s tried to get her attention. She blinks.

“Sorry.”

Joel comes closer, not so close he could reach out and grab her, and sits on a fashionable ottoman. “Don’t apologise,” He says in a carefully controlled voice. Is he mad about skipping dinner? “Just tell me what happened.” 

“Dude has no concept of personal space. Freaked me out, I overreacted.”

“He touched you?” Joel’s voice is low. 

Ellie touches her bicep absent-mindedly and shifts so her clothing isn't pressed against her ribs. There will be bruises tomorrow. That’s hard to normalise, but she does her best, digging her fingertips into her arm cruelly until she can almost believe she’s just done it to herself. “I think I went deaf from listening to my own puns. Didn’t hear him coming behind me, I just got a shock.” 

Joel’s voice is hard when he repeats the question. “Did he touch you?” 

Ellie closes her eyes and shakes her head. “No.” The lie doesn’t sound good. She waits for Joel to call her on it, because he’s annoyingly good at knowing this shit and Ellie can’t get away with it that much these days. But she opens her eyes and he’s not even looking her way. “You gonna shoot me?” She asks, in what she hopes is a light kind of tone. 

Joel realises that his hand is on his gun. He shakes his head. “Not you.” 

Ellie laughs. It isn’t really funny, but she needs to force something out of herself. It’s a mistake, because she finds that there's not enough air and it's jerking at something in her chest to try. Her throat seems smaller- her tongue is swelling, blocking any air out. Ellie leans forward, coughing and gasping. 

Joel doesn’t touch her. She wants to say that it’s okay for him, it’s always okay with him, he won’t hurt her. Joel wouldn’t hurt her. His touch isn’t taking . But none of that comes, so Ellie suffers alone while Joel speaks in a low hum and gives her water. She presses her eye sockets against her knee-caps where they’re pulled towards her chest and grabs ahold of the pain that shoots up her side. It's real, she's real, she's here . 

***

The sun has gone down when Ellie manages to stand. She can see the dark grounds from the window of her fake room. Joel draws the curtains and unties Ellie’s hoodie from around her waist, putting it in the laundry basket near her door. He fetches her water-bottle and ushers her into the bathroom, all without touching her once. 

He’s so angry . She can see it in him, the obvious change. Ellie’s pushed him to a point verging on this sometimes, prodding and poking until he snaps at her or threatens to make her wake uo at seven A.M for a week, but until now she hasn’t seen Joel when he’s properly fuming. Ellie’s not afraid of him, but she knows that angry adults don’t like mouthy teenagers. She shuts up and has a shower when he tells her to. She doesn’t argue when he pesters her to drink something. She doesn’t even look at him. Ellie might be annoying, but she’s not stupid enough to provoke someone bigger than her.

Something seems to click for Joel about twenty minutes after Ellie’s retreated to her room. She stares at the wall and clenches her jaw so hard it hurts. 

“Can I open the door?” He asks. Ellie mumbles the affirmative, and rolls over so he won’t be behind her. A stupid, childish part of her mind presents an image of David sneaking in during the night, pretending to be her guard until he’s close enough to hurt her. 

Ellie looks hard at the shape in her doorway. It’s definitely Joel. “What’s up?”
He’s quiet for a moment. She’d think he was awkward if he wasn’t still mad about everything. I tried to defend myself, she wants to say. I’m not the coward you hate me for being. 

“I was thinkin' you need to learn some self-defence.” He says after a minute.

“Like, right now?”

“No,” Joel sighs, “But next week. When you’re healthy.” 

Ellie pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks at Joel. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He stands there in silence for a while longer, eyes unfocused. Ellie swallows. “I’m clocking off now, until tomorrow morning.”

Ellie looks at the digital clock on the desk- it’s only ten at night. “It’s earlier than usual.”

“Tess will be fillin’ in for me. Ellie,” She pulls her eyes back to his face, just as Joel tosses something onto her bed. It takes a moment for her to realise that it’s another phone, an old burner type. “It ain’t got all your fancy music, or nothin’, but you’ll call me if anything happens and I’m not there. See that switch on the side, there?”

Ellie does. Turning it over in her hand, there are a few dials and buttons she doesn’t recognise. “...Yeah.”

“You flick it in emergencies, and I’ll be able to come get you, wherever you are. You keep that thing with you at all times . We clear?” She wants so badly to be able to read his tone, but Joel’s voice is as controlled as his face. Ellie nods. “Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow, kiddo. Get some sleep.”

He’s gone. Without really intending to be disobedient, Ellie doesn’t sleep for a long time. When she does it’s with the new phone gripped in one hand under her pillows.

Chapter Text

David wasn’t meant to leave before Friday, a week after he arrived, but when Ellie wakes up on Tuesday morning it’s to the news that he’s departing today. 

She sits up and looks at Joel through bleary eyes. It must’ve only been about four hours ago that she actually managed to get to sleep, and Ellie won’t pretend it was a peaceful night otherwise. “Why is he leaving?”

Joel crosses his arms. “He had prior commitments.”

It’s a lie, because David boasted about the vacation he was taking right after this, some fucked-up mission trip to a tropical region with conveniently low socioeconomic status. He loves going to nice places and taking one or two pictures with random children there, making a short speech about god's providence and relaxing for the next ten days. It would take a lot to interrupt that. “What commitments?”
“Prior ones- call from God. You gonna stay here today?” Joel changes the subject very un-subtly. 

Ellie swallows and dismisses whatever Joel’s not telling her. Whatever- if David is gone, that’s a good thing. His absence alongside her father's two-week trip to Seattle (technically political, probably just a golfing trip with his law school buddies) might even make life somewhat more bearable, if she's allowed to think that without jinxing it.

“Can I go to the park?” She asks. Joel nods, to her surprise. 

“I’ll tell Tommy. You got the phone I gave you last night?” He raises one eyebrow, like he’s expecting Ellie to have lost it already. The satisfaction she feels when she holds it up does something to quell the anxiety at the bottom of her stomach- there’s a chance that Joel did that on purpose.

“I’m gonna guard it with my life.” She promises, mock-serious. “I would take a fucking bullet if it meant that I did not lose this phone.”

“Please do not take a bullet.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Only because you used your manners.”

***

Ellie gets dressed quickly, wanting to make the most of Joel’s newfound relaxation about leaving the house and the potential to fit in more puns on the way. It’s getting warmer outside, so she abandons her hoodie for a massive grey t-shirt with Stanley Tucci’s face on it that makes Joel grimace. 

“You need new shoes.” He comments on their way downstairs, then cuts off Ellie’s undoubtedly brilliant and witty retort by putting an arm down in front of her and preventing her from going any further. She wonders if, a day ago he would’ve grabbed her- maybe on her arm, which is now ringed with blue and green bruising. She’s glad that he didn’t touch her, but if Joel’s gonna act like she’s freaking the fuck out anyway, Ellie is probably going to start getting freaked the fuck out.

“What?”

The echoing sound of two male voices answer that question for her; David and her father. He’s supposed to be gone. Heart hammering, Ellie takes two unsteady steps back from the edge of the staircase, where she might be seen from the foyer. Joel’s left wrist tells her nothing but that his watch is broken- not that she was ever given a specific time for David's departure, but she was hoping her guard might try to make sure it was before she had the opportunity to bump into him. Ellie looks up at Joel, increasingly panicked.

“Easy,” He says lowly. She shakes her head, and he steps backwards- there’s silence where David and Ellie’s father’s voices were a moment ago. Joel is visible to them.

“Ellie?” The President calls suddenly. She stiffens. “Come down here and say goodbye to your godfather. We can see your guard up there.” 

Joel puts out a hand when Ellie starts to move, like he’s going to stop her, but she pushes it away. Your fucking fault, she tries to say with her eyes. Joel’s the only one she’s actually revealed any part of the David thing to, and he won’t even do his fucking job and keep her safe from it. It feels, however unfairly, like a betrayal.

She keeps her eyes trained downward, the floor glossy enough that it reflects vague blobs where the two of them are standing.

“Here she is. Do you have a goodbye for your godfather?” Ellie wants to lunge forward and hit him, the way he says it, but she is still and silent and weak instead.

“Good-”
“Look at David when you speak to him,” Her father interrupts, without glancing Ellie’s way. She can’t feel Joel right behind her- the air in the space where he would usually stand is too cold. Ellie drags her eyeline from the floor, all the way to David’s face, then stutters when she notices the purple swelling up the bridge of his nose, clumsily covered with concealer. When she squints, she can make out more around his eye-socket, already vaguely yellowish. 

“Did you forget how to talk, at last?” The two of them chuckle, but her father’s words are laced with a hard venom she cannot ignore. “Be polite. ” 

Ellie mumbles something in the shape of ‘goodbye’, distracted by the overwhelming urge to find out when that happened. 

She tries to find a memory of hitting David that hard in the dark tangle of last night, but even if she hadn’t put it away so definitely in the back of her mind there’s nothing to indicate that she gave him this bruise. It happened somewhere between then and now, which seems impossible. David’s in the fucking White House, it’s not like there was a break-in. No. The only way he could’ve been hit that hard and not have it be a major security issue is if one of the agents themselves did it. Someone with enough authority to bypass cameras- the head of one of their details.

Ellie spins on the spot, finding Joel still standing at the base of the stairs with his hands joint in front of him. He meets her eye, but his expression remains steely- as it always is when they're anywhere public. He inclines his head ever so slightly towards the two men in the middle of the foyer. He’s telling her to turn back around. Ellie looks down at his hands again, realising that the stance is more of an excuse to massage the reddish bruises across his right knuckles. 

All the air in her lungs escapes her.

He shouldn’t have done it. David has the power to have Joel fired immediately, and it’s a wonder he hasn’t said anything so far. Why hasn’t he? It’s not like David isn’t important to her father, important enough to have people removed. What the fuck did Joel do to ensure his silence? And why ?

It was stupid for Joel to go after a public figure in this place, worse for him to do it because of some overreaction Ellie had. They could put him in prison. They could ruin his life if they wanted to, actually. She’s so fucking angry with him, she realises, his uncharacteristic irresponsibility and the fact he'd be willing to lose this whole job just to land a punch on some asshole. It's so fucking dumb, it's something she'd do.

She turns back. Her father is staring at Joel, and for a second she thinks he's figured it out too. But he only shakes his head a little, dull eyes back on hers. "Don't turn your back on us again."

David’s smile reminds Ellie of a piranha. “How about a hug for your godfather, sweetheart?”

It’s not a name he’s ever used before. Ellie knows he's just doing it to mess with her head, and she wants to react but it’s too late and she forgot how quick he was until he’s pulling her towards his chest. She makes her body as stiff as possible and tries not to breathe in his smell. Don’t breathe. Don’t fucking breathe. Her lungs begin to protest. 

David leans down and squeezes, revolting and simpering. “I’ll see you soon, Ellie.” 

Ellie bites down on the inside of her cheek. Don’t fucking let him get away with that. Hit back. “Fuck you, you motherfucking dickwad. Fall into a volcano.” She whispers. She tenses up enough that he won’t feel that she’s shaking, and then David is letting her go with a chuckle she turns away from. 

“She’s a firecracker, that’s for sure.” His voice fades as they head outside. She feels Joel nearby once more, but can’t look at him. Your fault.

Joel is silent for a long time, until he finally breaks eye contact. “Still going to the park?”

“Duh. Can we get the fuck out of here already?” She snaps.

***

Tommy notices something is up as soon as Ellie gets in the car. He turns and fixes her with the kind of sympathetic frown she knows won’t let her off without an explanation. “What?”

“What’s goin’ on, darlin’?”
“I’m not in the mood for any fucking pet-names right now, Tommy.” Ellie crosses her arms. Of course Christine took her goddamn music away right before she needed it most; Joel and Tommy don't seem ready to echo Ellie's anger back at her, but Deftones would usually do the trick. She slumps further down against the leather seat and presses her fingers into her bruise once more. Joel, climbing into the passenger side, levels a Look at her arm until she stops, then silently faces the front. It’s the first time she’s fully preferred him to Tommy.

“Alright, alright. Deep breath, then we can talk, okay?”

“You’re not my fucking therapist.”

Joel's brief stint as her favourite of the two ends as quickly as it started. He faces Ellie and glares more fiercely than he has any right to. “What just happened ain’t an excuse to be rude to Tommy. Watch your mouth.” 

Ellie scowls, face warming with both men staring at her. “Fuck off.”

Joel raises his eyebrows. “ Ellie . This is the last time I’m warnin’ you, if you don't-”

Tommy puts his hands up in a placating gesture. “It’s fine. We headed to the park?”

Ellie nods jerkily, and Joel turns to face the front. It’s all so unfair . He saw what just happened, why does he give a shit if she's rude to Tommy? Joel can suck a dick, as far as she’s concerned. He has no right to act like this- like he’s more than just some fucking muscle to protect her. And he can't even do that, she thinks resentfully. If Riley were here she'd know exactly what to say to make Ellie feel better, but she's alone in the backseat and the car is silent until they arrive at the park.

Joel is in a predictably bad mood when he opens her door, but he won't let her out until she's apologised to Tommy. So fucking stupid. "Sorry, whatever." Ellie mutters.

"That's alright, Ellie," Tommy says, unfairly kind. Guilt simmering beside anger, Ellie heads straight for her tree, disregarding everything Joel’s ever said about charging off. He doesn’t respond, which somehow makes her even more pissed-off. Fucking protect me, motherfucker. You're so happy to do your job until I'm actually in danger.

Ellie puts her hands against the trunk of the tree, a pale green umbrella over their heads, and breathes the fresh air through her nose. It smells like Riley, like springtime afternoons spent reading comics and using library computers to play dumb video games.

She can feel Joel staring at her. 

You were supposed to look after me , the thing in her head says, and she can’t decide if it sounds like she’s saying it to Joel or someone else is saying it to Ellie. The second one is worse. It’s so much worse. Ellie doesn't really have a choice but to hear it in her own voice; anger is simpler.

“Help me up.” She demands after a moment, turning to face him. 

“Not today.” Joel says flatly. Ellie glowers. 

“Why not?”
“You've been sick, and you're too emotional.”

Ellie scoffs, scuffing the toe of her sneaker into the ground. “I’m not sick anymore. And I’m not too emotional, that's fucking- fucking sexist, or something.”

“Wasn't because you're a girl, it's because you're a reckless kid who might get hurt.” Joel retorts, unwavering. Ellie wants to hit him. “Stay here as long as you like, do whatever’s gon’ help, but there’s no tree-climbing today. Understood?”
“You’re an asshole .” Ellie spits. Joel doesn’t even flinch. She moves forward, slamming both palms into his chest, but there’s a reason why she mistook him for a fucking wall last night. He doesn’t budge an inch, not even when she tries again, and then once more. “You’re a fucking dickhead! You’re a terrible security guard and- and a terrible person.” She says, fresh spring air curdling into wet concrete and death. You let me go there alone. You let it happen to me. She strains to force the voice to sound like hers, even when it ages just slightly, when it sounds like the other option. Worse. Worse. Worse.

“Calm down,” Joel says. 

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down, Joel. Why the fuck should I be calm right now?” Ellie feels like she's on fire, stalking away from him and whirling around to glower in his direction. Her hands itch, face hot and stomach hurting.

“Ellie,” He says in a dangerous voice, “You cannot draw attention to yourself like this. I’m bein' serious.”

“Really?” She laughs, sounding a little hysterical even to her own ears. “Really, Joel, ‘cos you just joke around so much usually that I can’t fucking tell! Thanks for the clarification, asshole. Do you wanna know what I think of you?” Silence. “I think you’re bullshit. I think you’re a bullshit person with a fucking bullshit personality- actually, scratch that, because you don’t even have a personality. All you do is pretend to protect people, but what have you actually protected anyone from?” 

Something shifts in Joel’s temples, his jaw. Ellie narrows her eyes. Gotcha, she thinks, terribly and reprehensibly vindicated by the response. Not a sweetheart now, am I?

“Nothing- that’s the answer, right? Fucking nothing. I don’t need you. You’re useless to me- you’re useless to anyone, right? I asked how many people you’ve killed, and I meant with that fucking gun, but now I’m thinking you’ve probably killed more just by being a fucking waste of space who can't do shit . Tell me I’m wrong. Go on, motherfucker, deny it and tell me that you’ve saved more than you’ve destroyed. Tell me you’re more than this fucking hollow sculpture of a person- tell me you’ve actually saved anything that was worth saving, ‘ cos I don't think you have,” She lashes. “ Joel. Answer me. ” 

A long silence pushes itself between them. Ellie doesn’t think about what she’s just said. When she starts, her vision blurs, and she becomes a cave echoing the same words into her own ears over and over again. It’s harder to fit them onto Joel than it is onto herself, even more so when she can so clearly hear Riley saying them. She knows what that kind of anger looks like on that face, the violence that could fill those soft, laughing eyes. Ellie knows what it is to be useless. A waste.

“We’re goin’ home.” 

“That’s not my fucking home.” Ellie says weakly, then turns her back to Joel so he won’t see her face. He’s not the hollow one, here, Riley says, made more real rather than banished by Ellie's own volume.

Joel’s face is carefully blank. She wants to scream at him to fight back, to scream at anything at all. “Sit down.” 

“What?’ Ellie snaps.  

“Sit on the bench and take a fuckin’ breath, girl. Now .” The swearing is the only sign that he’s angry with her, but it feels more complicated than that. It’s not anger by itself. It never can be- not for Ellie, and not for Joel either, apparently. 

“Why did you hurt David?” She crosses her arms. Joel takes a half-step forward, expression hard.

“I’m not askin' again.” Something in his tone makes Ellie do as he says, face heating once more. The wood of the seat is new enough to shine, clean and sheltered from everything but the occasional bird.

Ellie picks at her shoelaces and the beads that Riley threaded onto them, cheap green plastic against the muddy red of her converses. Riley used to thread the beads into her own hair, too, stealing them from the dollar store and sliding so many up her braids that they would clink together if she hadn't tied her hair up. It wasn't in her nature to move through the world quietly. She was tall, bright, wonderful- not that she wasn’t ever unhappy, but at least when Riley was upset she was strong about it. She always knew what she believed, how she felt about someone, whether she was going to do something and whether that thing was right. Not that it stopped her, knowing things were wrong, but at least she fucking knew . Ellie’s just guessing. Guessing wrong, if her most recent speech is anything to go by.

She was always a sickly kid- the group home where they spent several years on and off was run like a boot camp, snotty noses rubbed into second-hand sleeves and morning chores rigid even when the kids woke up with fevers. About eleven children between ages five and twelve would wash their plates in the same cold water, dry them on an overused towel, and reuse them. Ellie was smaller. She took her natural place near the end of the line, always getting water splashed at her, always getting kicked or pushed. Riley looked after her.

There were a couple of years without much contact- neither of them had cell-phones until they were teenagers. The loneliness made Ellie angrier, colder. She got beat up more. In summer, she’d be too hot, sunburnt and sweaty. In winter she froze, shivering under a half-eaten blanket by herself because the bigger kids stole her shit. Scraped knees went unbandaged, baby fat disappeared too quickly. Good placements were even fewer and farther between.

There are supposed to be a few where you get lucky- brief kindnesses, moments of reprieve from all the rest of the system. And Ellie waited and wished, and finally she began to give up, give in to the bullying, because those placements never really came for more than a day at a time- even then, it wasn't the same as genuine love. It was always the satisfaction of someone else's ego, their belief in their own goodness, the fulfilment of a perpetually temporary duty. Until Riley appeared again. 

Like a guardian angel, she came back into Ellie’s life when she’d been ready for it to be over. Ellie had long since stopped dodging punches, stopped looking both ways when she crossed the road, stopped drinking water for days at a time until her body couldn’t physically stand the dehydration any longer. Riley burst into the group home for girls with stolen candy and a fuck-you look on her face, and she recognised Ellie first, ‘the little one from that shithole in Brentwood’. They were roommates, they were best friends, they were everything to each other. Ellie didn't need to dodge punches if she was behind the kid throwing them- and it wasn't only bigger kids who Riley protected her from. She stood guard outside the bathroom when Ellie got her first period, improvising pads from their toilet paper and stealing supplies from Walmart, losing their minds laughing when the library computer started playing a tampon-insertion tutorial at full volume. Riley looked after Ellie the first time they hung around a group of too-cool rich teenagers, pretending to be used to the taste of beer and making up bullshit about being in gangs and roadtripping across the country to escape strict parents. Riley was always around. Ellie loved her before she even knew what love was.

Then suddenly, Riley’s jokes about loving Ellie, pretending to be dating her to get teenage boys off her back, were too much. It was Ellie who pulled away first, afraid of fucking it all up. She was the one who tried to let go of it all, lost in her own fucking pining the first night that Riley snuck out to meet some new friends in a parking lot- kids fresh out of the system, some of them living on the street, all of them using. She came home with a needle-bruise on her arm and guilt heavy in her bloodshot eyes. She told Ellie it was cool, they were all cool, and there was a new slope to her voice that the younger girl hated. Who the fuck tried shit like that after only ever smoking weed? Who went that extreme, that quickly? What kind of unhappy do you have to be feeling to want that ?

Riley insisted it was one time, but she also wouldn’t let Ellie look at the inside of her elbows. They fought, and Ellie back off, and Riley left. Every day for weeks, she was climbing out the window after lights-out and coming back a different person. Ellie pretended not to hear her arrive, after a while, too exhausted to deal with the stranger in their room and the come-down. She pretended that she didn’t see the bruises spreading outwards from Riley’s arms, big blotches painting her legs and hands and face, evidence of nights neither of them wanted to think about, the ways Riley paid for her habit. It wasn’t as if the people running their group home cared; the Kwongs had other priorities. Riley's bruises were eventually noted and she and Ellie were placed separately; there were concerns about influence, about the kinds of things two kids could do as opposed to just one.

Weeks would pass, and Riley wouldn’t show up to the park so there was nobody to help Ellie up to the lowest bough of their tree- the bench wasn’t there yet. She kept coming back anyway. She knew that Riley had chosen to abandon her, but she couldn't feel the grief of it while hope lingered too. Ellie got good at stealing packages of plasters and antiseptic from the pharmacy, tying them into bundles with whatever food she could scavenge and throwing them into the open space she couldn't reach. She knew how to avoid shitty placements for as long as possible- she and Riley had mapped out parks, churches, and parking lots where you could reasonably hide for a couple of days without being found. She scoured the city for months- even when she agreed to a paternity test and things turned upside-down and suddenly presidential candidates were real people who Ellie needed to know about, she found her chances to look for Riley until finally, finally, her friend showed up at their spot.

She'd become an angel all over again. Her hair was clean, skin restored to its warm glow, beads back in her hair. She'd gained weight- still too skinny, but not so much that looking at her made Ellie feel afraid. It was as if she'd never been gone. She told Ellie about an actually good fucking placement, can you believe that shit? who helped her get clean. Ellie told her everything detestable about her half-siblings and father. Neither of them mentioned the things that had been left in their hiding place- 'thank you' wasn't something Ellie needed to hear, she decided.

And it was payback enough, hearing Riley talk about becoming a professional athlete, going to law school, opening a restaurant or moving to a ranch in Montana the second she was done with the whole fucked-up system. She was going to work hard over summer and buy a bus ticket across the country, leave this whole place in the dust. Not without you, duh, she'd grinned, and held Ellie's hand. There was more than that, too- Ellie can't think of it. Things felt like they were going to be okay, was the point. Ellie had been so sure they were going to be okay.

Even when Riley started using for a couple of months, Ellie had been the one to convince her- finally, finally, able to convince her of something - to speak to her foster parents. They helped Riley, even when she didn’t want them to. They wanted the best for her. They had Ellie over for dinner, even though they didn’t seem to like her much; she was a bad influence, maybe. But Riley was happy. That was all Ellie needed, really, and the rest of the world faded.

The last time she saw Riley, it was barely anything at all. They both had places to be- Ellie was headed to detention for getting in a fight, Riley was catching up with some guys she'd known when she was younger. It wasn’t final enough to make sense. It was handing back clothes Riley had been able to wash in her group home and Ellie trading her some stolen beers for the favour. They'd been apart for a month or so, texting occasionally- and maybe Riley was a little more gaunt, maybe it was odd for her to be wearing long sleeves in the unseasonably warm weather, but Ellie didn't think about any of it. She didn't want to imagine that Riley was starting to lie again. She didn't say that she loved her, didn’t kiss her, didn’t do fucking anything because she was too sure that there would be another chance.

The thing is, Riley abandoned Ellie by choice before the permanent thing stole her. People called her death another ‘relapse’, like a lapse was an accurate description of all the times Riley started using again- a brief or temporary failure of judgement . How could they say it was temporary when it was all Riley became for years? When it consumed her? The two girls were the same, never knowing when to stop. But Ellie wouldn’t have done that to Riley. Not to anyone. 

So yes, some days she wanted Riley to feel that things had changed between them. She wanted her to see that Ellie was just as nonchalant about the time they'd spent apart, just as ready to minimise their meeting to nothing more than the essential five minutes. Ellie had felt a sense of accomplishment in refusing to ask for more time together. She'd hoped Riley would wonder if she should reach out, stop expecting her friend to be waiting for her all the time. Ellie’d been sick of feeling like she was always following Riley somewhere, sick of the imbalance between them. It was so petty, but she was so angry. She'd never stopped being angry even when she loved Riley, too.

She'd waited a full forty-five minutes before responding to Riley's text asking Ellie to come and hang out with some people they'd known a while ago, wanting to seem more busy than she was- i might come join in a bit, i was thinking of bunking in that parking lot across from the storage area anyway . The replies Riley send weren't close to coherent- Ellie began panicking.

She can't make herself remember the rest of the night. The clamouring scent of hot concrete, of vomit and infection and finally, death. What it's like watching someone's body go stiff, feeling their skin turn cold underneath your hands. It's too much to fit inside her head right now. The last time Ellie spoke to Riley without begging, said her name without crying, is contained under the gentle dome of this tree.  

***

Now, Ellie pushes the pad of her thumb against the dull silver plaque that has Riley’s name on it. It was a condition of deleting all her social media accounts and any photos of the two girls together, especially those that could be imply truth to the rumours about her sexuality already echoing in some smaller tabloids, that Riley would get something. In hindsight, a totally redundant deal; they found an excuse to confiscate Elie's smartphone and give her one that managed music, texting, calling, and absolutely nothing else at their earliest convenience. She has nothing to negotiate with anymore. There's no part of her they can't control.

She stares at the engraved letters, and says, “I don’t want this to be my life.” 

“I know,” Joel replis. She looks up at him sharply, but he holds her gaze. “You don’t deserve this shit, not at your age.”

“You don’t know what I deserve.” Ellie retaliates immediately, wary that there might be a punchline here that she hasn’t caught yet. Joel should be so, so angry. He should not understand. “I- I say fucked-up shit like that, I always make you mad-”

“I’m not mad.” Joel shakes his head, just barely. His eyes catch hers. “I’m not. Not at you, alright?”

Ellie frowns. “You shouldn’t just- you can’t just move on, you shouldn’t make excuses for me. I fucked up.” I didn’t mean any of it, is what won’t come out, and she doesn’t know if it’s because it would be a lie or something else.

“I won’t make excuses, but there are other things at play here. You got that?” He fixes her with a stern look. Ellie searches it for anger before she believes him. “I need to hear that you understand me, kid.” It’s not kiddo anymore. Ellie pushed him away on purpose, maybe she won’t hear that again. It’s fine; she can survive without Joel calling her something stupid, just- it’s an observation. No more kiddo.

“Okay.” 

He comes a few feet closer. Ellie can see other members of her security team moving around beyond the leaves of the willow tree. “...I’m sorry that you had to speak to him. Wasn’t right, I should’ve done more.”

“You couldn’t have. It’s fine,” She lies. She probably deserves however that made her feel. Karma, maybe.

“It isn’t,” Joel says firmly. There’s a short pause. “I hit him because I had to ensure he wouldn’t try anythin’ with you so long as I’m around- won’t hurt you. Fear works.” 

It’s a shock to hear him admit it so easily, but Ellie tries not to show it. She swallows a couple of times and keeps rubbing her thumb along the smooth metal. “He didn’t hurt me.”

Joel doesn’t agree to believe this. “You’ll tell me if he does it again, Ellie. Straight away, you use that phone or you come find me.”

Ellie fixes Joel with a look she hopes rivals his for hardness. “It's not like you can do anything if he really wanted to hurt me. He's my dad's friend.”

Joel makes a low sound that she doesn’t think is entirely intentional. It occurs to Ellie that he’s never been very concerned with her seeing him as a good person- or being one, for that matter. She isn’t sure what kind of things he’s capable of. “I will do what I have to to make sure you're safe. Way I see it, that doesn't depend on who he's friends with.”

“Don’t lose your job.” Ellie says after a moment- she isn’t sure how to convince Joel that there’s nothing he can do to properly save her from an uncomfortable touch here and there, that it probably isn’t worth it. What she is sure of is that she can’t start over with someone else; she doesn't want anyone else. Ellie shakes off the thought quickly. Since when are you this fucking sentimental?

“I won’t.” Joel confirms. He looks at the plaque. “Your friend-”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” Ellie interrupts. “Please.” 

He could call her pathetic. She’s acting that way. People have been through worse- Ellie's been through worse- than talking about something that happened almost half a year ago. It’s been so long. But. 

After Riley died, things moved so quickly that Ellie didn’t ever really let herself feel it. Like, she recognises the sharp agony of what happened, knows it hurts, but she’s sort of imagined herself in the same boat as Riley’s body. She moves from place to place and grows colder and more numb, and that’s what’s been working until recently. But- but now, she has to remember things lik the smell of vomit and concrete and the ‘situation the damn police found her in a few months ago’, and she can’t blame Joel or anyone else but it’s just all a lot. Ellie thought she was moving past the pain of it, but there’s so much more than she’d anticipated. It’s like her mind has been waiting for her to open the doors to the grief. She wants to close them more than she wants anything else.

“...Alright. We need to have a talk, though.” Joel says. 

“About you beating David up?”

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I did not ‘beat David up’. And we’ve covered it already, so I don't want you talkin' 'bout-” 

“Did he cry?”

Joel glances upwards. “We’re not-”

“Sorry. By the way.” Ellie swipes a hand across her nose. “For being shitty just then. That’s what I meant to say before.” It’s not exactly there , but she already feels like she’s being stretched far beyond comfort just apologising. 

Joel pauses, and she tries to imagine what he looks like when he's surprised without actually seeing his face. When he speaks, his voice is quieter. “You will never talk to me that way again, Ellie. Are we clear?”

Now she does make eye contact, a little startled at the sternness in his tone. “I- yeah.”

Joel nods decisively. “Good. I won't repeat that.” 

Ellie picks at the wood and sighs into the silence. “You were saying?”
“I was going to speak with you ‘bout going away somewhere.”

“Like a vacation?”

Joel clearly doesn’t like this definition of his plan, but he nods. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Somewhere tropical? You know, I don’t tan, I burn, so I’ll need-”
“Not somewhere tropical, hold your horses. There’s a house that we use in case of emergency- it’s secure, it’s away from the city, and I think it’d be good for you. By a lake.” 

Ellie considers him. It doesn’t make sense, really; the White House is meant to be pretty fucking safe, and there’s not a valid reason to move her. Marlene would never do something nice for Ellie- not unless it was a life-or-death situation. Her father certainly wouldn’t care enough to arrange this. All signs point to Joel genuinely being the originator of this idea, but it’s fucking weird that he’d want Ellie to go on vacation after she’s been such a dick to him. He should be sending her to military school, or something.

“Why?”

“You’re holed up in that house for weeks on end without any friends, kid. It ain’t good for your mental health, so-”

“You did not just say ‘mental health’.” Ellie scoffs. Joel raises an eyebrow in question, an edge of irritation in his expression. Ellie explains, “Dude, you’re like, seventy. I thought you would be one of those ‘therapy ain’t real, rub some dirt in it’ kinda people.” 

Joel does not find her flawless imitation of his accent as amusing as Ellie does. “Uh-huh.”

She keeps going, less and less convinced by the notion of being put in a safehouse for totally fake reasons. “And I do have friends.”

“Who?”

“Tess. Tommy.” Ellie purposefully doesn’t say Joel’s name, because he’s not quite at the point of admitting how funny and cool she is yet. “...Marlene.”

Joel rolls his eyes for the thousandth time. “You don’t like Marlene.”

“Frenemies, then,” Ellie concedes. “Whatever. Point is, there’s no reason to tear me away from my wonderful life in DC. Displacement is bad for kids, man. Why would you?”
He sighs heavily. Ellie wonders if every conversation with her brings him a little closer to changing his name to Sisyphus. “The therapist you’ve been pretendin’ to see thinks that space and fresh air would be beneficial for you… And David’s comin’ back in June. The assumption is that he’ll be staying in DC for two weeks, and I believe it would be better if you were absent for that period.” 

Ellie wraps one of her shoelaces around her finger and squeezes so tight it turns a little purple, keeping her face blank (the effect of nonchalance might be a little easier to execute if she hadn’t just yelled at Joel a few minutes ago). There’s something hot and angry twisting around her stomach, edged with a softer warmth that she shoves away just as quickly. Joel’s just doing his job. “Oh. Gotcha.”
“I’ve been ironing out the details with Marlene and your detail. Once we have your father’s consent-”

Ellie shakes her head. “He’ll never agree. It won’t look good for him if his kid disappears the minute the online-theology-degree pastor shows up.” 

The look she gets is not an impressed one. “The Secret Service is generally known for maintainin' privacy. It’s a ‘wellbeing retreat’. Marlene will present it as such, and I doubt your dad will have many argument against gettin' you out of the way.”

It's true that Ellie's not a very amiable person for her father to keep around- by her own design.

“I won’t go if you’re doing this because you pity me.”

Joel is unfazed. “I’m not.”

“Not even a little?”

“You can handle yourself,” He says, like it’s for her sake more than the truth. “Your physical safety is my chief concern.”

“If the safehouse has mosquitos, that's a conflicting factor.”

“You will not be killed by mosquitos.”

Ellie scoffs. “Nice try. Ever heard of malaria? Yellow fever? I could go on.”

“Who’s the death-rate encyclopaedia now?”

She gets off the bench, pretending that she’s not pleased he remembered something from so long ago, and Joel follows her out from under the shade of the willow. Ellie pointedly ignores the curious looks that other members of her security detail are giving her, hoping that it’s because she’s had a miraculous growth spurt in the twenty minutes since they arrived rather than overhearing the argument that’s just transpired. 

 ***

In the car, Tommy gives Ellie a slightly wary smile when she climbs back into the backseat. Joel gives her a pointed look. 

“Sorry for being a dick. For real.” She mutters. Tommy waves the apology away a little less concernedly than he did the first time. 

“Nothin’ I don’t deal with from Joel here, Ellie-girl.” He grins. "Between the two of you, you're grumpy as all get out."

Ellie frowns, confused. She hasn’t heard Joel be explicitly an asshole to Tommy, which can only mean one thing: “You guys hang out without me?”

"Seatbelt." Joel says uncooperatively.

"Duh. Tommy?"

Tommy laughs, pulling out onto the main road. "Yeah, hon, sometimes. Why do you sound so surprised?”

She sits up and raises her eyebrows. “Because I am! If this friendship turns into something more- you know how I feel about Brokeback Mountain- I'll be the best man at the wedding.”

Ellie’s pretty sure if Tommy was a less responsible driver, he would’ve slammed on the breaks. Joel makes an affronted noise. “Come again?”

“Hey, I won’t judge. Love is love. What can two country-music-lovers do?”

“That’s just wrong, Ellie. Christ.” Joel says seriously. Ellie’s pretend-frown grows a little more serious. Please don’t let my bodyguard be a bigot just as I start thinking he’s not-terrible. 

“Oh.” She says, growing silent. A few minutes pass. Tommy glances at her in the rear-view.

“What’s got you so down now?”
Maybe the best tactic is just to come out and say it. Ellie’s rarely commended for her subtlety. “You guys don’t like gay people?”

Two identical huh’ s greet this question. “What are you talkin’ about, Ellie?” Joel asks, sounding slightly exhausted. 

“‘That’s just wrong’?”

Tommy pulls into the driveway. “Not because we’re both men, Ellie, it’s because we’re goddamn related.”

Now it’s Ellie’s turn to huh? Joel is giving her his fed-up look. 

“We’re brothers. Biologically related. Brokeback Mountain ain’t the best comparison to draw here.” Tommy explains. Ellie thinks she might need about fifty wellbeing retreats to recover from this revelation. “You didn’t know?”

“How was I supposed to know that? What the fuck?”
“Our last names are the same.” Joel deadpans. Joel Miller. Tommy- yeah, Miller. Fuck . 

“You thought- you thought we were a couple?”

“That part was a fucking joke, man, chill out.” Tommy begins to chuckle. Ellie’s face feels hot. “It’s not funny! You’ve been lying to me- that’s against your code of conduct, I’m pretty sure.”
“I have never denied being his brother.” Joel says flatly. Tommy laughs harder, which is definitely unprofessional.

“You didn’t tell me!” 

The fed-up look turns into an are you stupid on purpose look. “I’d assumed you could work it out for yourself, bein’ older than five.”

“Aw, come on, Joel,” Tommy guffaws. Ellie wants to strangle him a little bit. “She couldn’t have known. Ain’t like we look the same, or nothin’. Come from the same place, speak the same way…” 

The two of them only look very slightly similar, Ellie reasons. “There are plenty of southerners on the planet! And Joel literally tells me nothing about himself!” 

Tommy’s laughter is getting offensive. Ellie is reminded of how many times she has ranted to him about Joel, made weird comments about their budding friendship, all the mortifying shit that she would never have done if she knew they were fucking brothers. 

“This is a betrayal.” She announces, covering her face with both hands. Joel opens her door.

“You’re bein’ dramatic.” 

“I am not,” She points an indignant finger in his direction, then back at Tommy. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner. Do you- I can’t- Fuck! I hate this. I’m going to bed.” 

Ellie gets out of the car, ignoring Tommy’s laughing apologies, and stomps straight up to her bedroom. She ignores the way Joel’s lips twitch when she tells him not to talk to her until lunch, completely appalled that this is the moment he decides to show her that he can find things funny.

Chapter Text

Despite her best efforts, Ellie can’t really stay mad at Tommy for withholding the truth about his relationship to Joel.

“He was worried that you wouldn’t feel as comfortable around him,” Tess explains a week after Ellie found out, offering her a plastic bowl of spaghetti bolognese. “He knows you weren’t the biggest fan of Joel to begin with and he didn’t want you to feel like nobody was on your side.”

“But nobody is on my side,” Ellie says. Tess tilts her head. 

“Uh-huh. I’ll take that pasta back, then?”
Ellie avoids her grab for the food, shuffling across to the other side of the hallway. “Excluding you, duh. And even then- you and Joel go way back. How do I know you aren’t also telling him about all the shit-talking I do?” 

Tess smirks. “Yeah, like I haven’t been doing just as much of it, kid. Would you relax? It’s not a big deal. Accommodate the information and move on.”

Despite her usual admiration of Tess’ go-with-the-flow attitude, right now Ellie could use someone as annoyed as she is. It’s like they’re all in a club together and she’s the only one not allowed into it- if she was taller, they would probably let her. “This is world-altering shit, Tess.”

“This is a biological relationship that nobody was hiding.” 

Ellie scowls. “Well, excuse me for being more used to the secret type.” 

It’s an unfair thing to say, bringing her dad into this when Tess is actually trying to look out for her. Luckily, she remains unoffended. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“Are there any other not-secret-but-secret relationships I should know about? A lovechild between you and Tommy, maybe?”
Tess wrinkles her nose. “Nah. He’s not my type.” 

“Is it the country music thing?”

Tess laughs. Ellie’s unreasonably pleased to have her approval. “Something along those lines, sure. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

Ellie cringes. She probably should- Joel said so, a couple of days ago, trying to get all stern and tough-guy like he always does. Less effective when it’s enforcing a bedtime, it turns out. Ellie read him Will Livingston until he got off her back about it. 

“Do you think Jeff Bezos sleeps naked?”
“I can feel the punchline coming.”

“...Or maybe with paj-amazon. Ha.” It’s a weaker one. Tess evidently agrees. 

“Go to bed. Talk to Tommy, too, he misses you.” 

Ellie’s pretty sure she’s kidding or lying. She’s not a miss-able person, generally- it’s an easy conclusion to draw and also a depressing one, but people haven’t had an issue leaving her behind. So. 

Jesus fucking christ. 

Sometimes it’s very frustrating how easily her mind turns to this shit. More frequently in the past few days, too, like Ellie’s brain wants her to feel as shitty as possible.

“I will. Tell him I want more popsicles.”

Tommy’s way of apologising for keeping his brotherhood a secret is to send assorted desserts to Ellie’s room, which Joel reluctantly passes on (Ellie's pretty sure he's only actually given her half of the gifts out of concern for cavities). In return, she’s started letting the latter Miller teach her self-defence- or at least, facilitate the teaching of self-defence.

It’s a lot harder than she thought, especially since Ellie’s not exactly built like an ox. There’s an external instructor who comes and teaches her, despite Ellie’s assumption that Joel would. It’s probably better this way; she can’t expect him to do shit like that, even if she’d be more comfortable knowing there was someone who’s somewhat well-practiced in restraint. Besides, the instructor is fine, if a little sappy. He keeps saying shit like good try when Ellie knows she’d be dead if that happened in real life. 

Another new development is the revelation that Joel knew Ellie was faking seeing a therapist, or at least genuinely talking to one. She usually goes to her appointments and fakes a terrible stomach-ache or alternatively recites a Twilight plot-line as if it's her own life until Frank catches on. He’s nice, or whatever, but Ellie’s rarely in the mood for sentimentality. And  she’s done a pretty good job of handling shit herself.

Except now Joel has decided to escort her to the next session, something that happens every second week, in a move that feels very, very unfair. He refuses to let Ellie leave until Frank is satisfied, which apparently takes a bit more than admitting ‘I’m sad my mom died’. Neither of them have been sympathetic to her demands for mercy yet. 

She’s usually pretty good at figuring people out. She got Michael- the first security guy- within a week, which was enough to get on his last nerve and secure his removal fom her team. She’s not dumb , generally, but she fucking feels that way whenever Joel, Tommy or Tess are around. 

Tommy is probably the easiest. However impossible it is to believe, he’s actually a nice person (disregarding his secret-keeping abilities). He goes along with her jokes a lot of the time and unlike someone else, actually admits that he enjoys Will Livingston’s genius. Ellie likes to think that she knows him, at least a little. He was in the military, which she now knows is code for the special ops thingy that Tess and Joel also did, and he got injured, but not badly enough that he can’t drive her around. He’s technically part of her security team, or trained as such. He likes buying popsicles for her, he listens to country music, he’s got an inventory of chargers that don’t work in the glovebox of every car he drives and he’s got killer taste in movies- it’s because of him that Ellie first watched The Mummy, sparking what she’s sure is a lifelong love of Brendan Fraser (and Rachel Weisz, but that one’s a little different). The first time he drove Ellie anywhere was to Riley’s funeral. He was the only person who didn’t tell her to smile for the press, and when she got back in the car a few hours later, there was a box of Fudgsicles waiting for her. It’s become something of a tradition since then.

So Ellie likes to think Tommy isn’t too foreign to her, which is why it’s mind-blowing that she had no idea Joel was his brother. It’s not something he’s done wrong, but it feels like it should change something. What has Joel told him about the parts of herself that she keeps stored in this house - the panic attacks, David, the argument in the park? It felt safer when she knew exactly what she’d shown to everyone in her life. 

Tess should be separate from both of them, but she’s not. She’s familiar enough that Tommy’s telling her shit like that he misses Ellie, which is the kind of sappy thing she’d assumed he would only share with close friends. Being honest, Ellie knows a little less about the her night guard, excluding her career choice, but she knows that Tess used to have a son, and doesn’t anymore. They talked about it a few months back, and it was a relief when she realised that she wasn’t all by herself in every regard. Even if Ellie’s got no real friends, she knows that Tess has felt loss like that, and that they’re the same in some ways. The relief is dimmed when she imagines Tommy and Tess talking about how Ellie had cried in the car from the funeral, or laughing at her for having fucking temper tantrums in the car or in her room the night before a public appearance. It’s humiliating, being known. Especially when she is apparently not quite as observant regarding them as they are her. 

The unavoidable truth is that they all know her better than she wants them to, and she only sees one side of each person. At least Joel has been consistently un-figure-out-able since she met him, so this isn’t a big change, just a few more questions to add to the ever-growing collection. 

Ellie takes out the batteries of the smoke detector in her room and smokes a joint, writing a list in a notebook that she titles ‘Questions About J-Dog’. 

do he and Tommy shit-talk me?

did he forget how to laugh and/or smile in a terrible amnesia incident?

does he know a lot of facts about the cold war or is that just his vibe?

what makes him so grumpy? Is is just an old age thing?

why is he so weird all the time??? why can't he just act normal and choose a personality?

why does he care if I told frank I couldn’t have sex with my vampire boyfriend on their honeymoon because he was too freaky with it??

Why do I care if he does anything ever? why does it matter?

None of it makes sense. The why is the biggest question, because there isn’t a logical reason for him to do more than stand outside Ellie’s door all day and make sure she isn’t getting shot. The therapy, the safehouse… none of that is his job. 

Ellie writes another question.

does he know what his jurisdiction actually is or is he guessing all the time?? 

Then,

do sharks have abs?

Ellie goes to sleep. 

***

In a fun development the next morning, it turns out that Joel is very, very uncool about softcore drugs. Ellie is not someone who owns perfume, and her hair smells like the inside of the Mystery Van (2002 live action version) when she opens her door. He is somehow less okay with Ellie smoking weed than he is with her learning to shoot a gun. 

“How do you even know what it smells like if you say you’ve never had any?” She asks as he steers her towards her bathroom. “Tommy said he’d tried it, which means you probably did too-”

“Or I yelled at him for it, somethin’ I’m trying not to do right now,” Joel interrupts irritably, ushering her through the door. “Take a goddamn shower, then we’ll talk.”

“Can’t wait.” Ellie says sarcastically. Joel shuts the door. 

She does shower, but not because Joel told her to. She’s not an animal; she knows better than to go around smelling like weed in the fucking White House, and she’s generally making more of an effort to be hygienic since Tess told her she smelled like the armpit of one of her father’s supporters a week ago. To tell the truth, Ellie has been feeling less and less like showering and brushing her hair and all that shit, and more like staying in bed for days on end. She’s wondered if she’s actually sick, and all her excuses for missing ‘family’ (cue vomit noises) dinners have manifested into something real.

After a twenty-minute marination in water that turns her whole body red and soap that smells like a beach in Miami (allegedly) Ellie pulls herself from the shower. She’s aware that the only alternative to talking to Joel is actually drowning herself, which seems both a little dramatic and overly complicated when you have a low-pressure rainwater shower head.

Joel is waiting in the doorway to her fake room, frowning a little more harshly than usual. Ellie has to commend his lack of insecurity about getting wrinkles- the guy is definitely not on the anti-aging train.

“Go get dressed,” He says when he sees her. Ellie had been pretty content to stay in the fluffy white robe all day today, but given that she’s already on his bad side she’s reluctant to push it. 

When she reappears in an outfit heavily inspired by Adam Sandler’s fashion career, Joel crosses his arms and stares at her.

“Look-” She begins. He puts up a hand, stopping her.

“That shit isn’t good for you, Ellie. I know that you know that because you took a four-day drug education course a little while ago, and I’ve found you smellin’ like that infrequently enough that you can’t be suffering from memory loss just yet,” He begins. Ellie leans against the wall, preparing herself for a very long lecture and trying not to focus on the uncomfortable heat rising in her face. She doesn’t fucking care what Joel thinks, anyway. “What made you think that was gonna be acceptable?”
“It’s legal in this district.”

“You are fourteen goddamn years old, Ellie. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not, it is illegal for children.” 

She frowns. “Not a child.” Yes, whatever, she knows that’s not technically true. But today Ellie is an old soul, or whatever’s gonna excuse smoking. Not a child. 

Joel tuts, rolling his eyes. “Don’t give me that.”

“It’s weed, it won’t kill me- I know you have a fucking statistic for that, I don’t care.” Ellie stares at a portrait on the wall. “Everyone smokes sometimes as a teenager. Tommy turned out fine.”
“Tommy is not you.”

“So what?”

“So your circumstances are different,” Joel explains. Asshole. “And Tommy turned out fine because somebody stepped in and told him not to do that shit.”

Ellie tilts her head, trying to keep her voice as nonchalant as possible. “Is it because I’m a woman?”
“This ain’t the time for jokes, Ellie, I’m serious. If I catch you doing that again I’ll make sure you regret it.” Joel says firmly. Ellie wrinkles her nose and continues avoiding his eyes. 

“Okay. Sure.” 

“You want to call my bluff, kid?”

She scoffs, and spends an embarrassing moment trying to think of what to say. “I didn’t say that. Whatever.”
Joel moves towards her. “Not ‘whatever’. The next time this happens-”

“Joel, fine, I get it!” Ellie pushes off the wall and hurries away, suddenly a little too warm. 

She doesn’t want to hear him say that he’ll hit her. It would be nice to keep that a mystery for a little longer, even if she knows deep down what he means. As irritating as the points of similarity between Joel, Tommy and Tess have been, it would be worse uncovering something that Joel, her father, and more than a few foster families have in common. And Ellie already knows what happens when you upset an adult. She’s not stupid, Joel doesn’t have to spell it out. Actually, it’s probably more funny than anything that he thinks it’ll stop her. She just wants this conversation over with. It’s a- a fucking stupid thing for him to get so riled up over.

“I’m not sure you do,” He says, because he’s a dickface. 

“That’s not on me. I get it, whatever, drugs equal bad. Thank you and goodnight.”

Ellie starts walking towards her actual room, but Joel shakes his head. “You have your self defence class in fifteen minutes. Get your water-bottle and be ready in ten.”

“I’m tired.” 

“That’s not on me.” He echoes flatly. 

After being threatened with a beating for smoking weed, Ellie isn’t really in the mood to get beat around some more, but Joel is pretty adamant that she has to attend the class. He deposits her in the gym at precisely eleven o’clock and answers her middle finger with a raised eyebrow. Ellie turns her back to the door and tries not to yell at something. 

***

The whole hitting thing doesn’t come up until about three weeks later, just over a month before Ellie’s due to go on the ‘wellbeing retreat’ and David is due to reappear in DC. The time has passed unreasonably slowly. Frank, despite proving himself a little less painful to speak with when he said that he ‘enjoyed a healthy amount of marijuana at times’ (she ignores the part where he said it was once he’d reached adulthood), is still a therapist and usually doesn’t let Ellie leave a session without admitting that she doesn’t like her dad, or something. It’s all stupid. He’s also told her that she shouldn’t spend entire days in bed staring at the ceiling- and of course fucking Joel had to hear that part so he’s bumped up the number of self-defence classes and insists on Ellie going outside at least once a day. She’s unsure how to explain that some mornings, she’s unsure if it’s hours or years since everything happened to Riley, and the world feels like it’s going to chew her up and swallow her if she leaves her room. 

Her father’s busy being corrupt, inviting his climate-catastrophe-inducing friends to come for dinner to discuss funding their ventures in exchange for campaign support. Tess is the only one who will even vaguely admit to Ellie what she thinks of this- she said that it was ‘objectively a shitty move’, and that was the end of it. Joel and Tommy are adamantly and heinously neutral.

To be fair, Joel recovered from his momentary narc status after a couple of days, going back to being his usual grumpy self as opposed to his actually annoyed self. Thank fucking god, because Ellie’s needed a reason to get out of every one of those stingy dinners and he is very good at providing reports of ‘unruly behaviour’ and illness on the days that they occur. She’s only invited as a formality, anyway, it’s not like anyone wants her there.

Still, he can’t save her from this. Her father has a friend, Richard Gusler (Ellie calls him Dick Guzzler), who has a lot of traction in the coal industry. He, his wife Pamela, and their son Alistair are all coming for dinner and due to Alistair only being a few years older than Ellie, she’s invited to join them. Seth, a PR person who Ellie hates with a passion, thinks it would be good if the two teens could be seen together a few times, both to dispel certain rumours about Ellie and to create rumours about their two families’ connection beyond the usual bribery and corruption shit. It’s archaic and awful and Christine says that if Ellie doesn’t do it she will not see a cellphone until the end of her father’s presidential term. So, off she goes.

“Can’t you tell Dick Guzzler that I would rather shit out the Empire State Building than speak to his son?” Ellie says, on the way downstairs. Joel looks at her sideways.

“No, I can’t.” 

“You’re so lucky you never met him. He’s like, actually the worst.”

“Right.”

“If I had the choice between being in a room with Stalin and Dick Guzzler, I would choose Stalin, probably. Or like, at least I would take some time to think about it. Do you know much about Stalin?”
He sighs judgementally. “No.”
“Huh. You kinda seem like the type, no offence. Not because I think you’re a communist. Are you?”
“No. And I’m not discussin’ my political affiliations with you.”

“You just did. Don’t worry, I won’t tell my dad,” Ellie grins. “What about Tommy? Just ‘cos it rhymes, you know? Tommy the commie.” 

Joel is unamused. 

“Actually, that would be a great way to cut this dinner short- if I like, re-started McCarthyism. Did you ever read The Crucible in school?”

“No.”

“Figures. We had to study it like, a whole semester. It sucked.” Ellie stares dejectedly at the fast-approaching bottom of the staircase. “I don’t want to do this,” She groans. “If I jumped over the edge of this stairwell right now would you be mad?”

“You ask a lot of damn questions.”

“Yes, I do,” She agrees. “Would you?”
“Yes.”

“You would have to understand my reasons, though. I showed you Alistair’s instagram on Tommy’s phone! Startling resemblance to the kid of Freddy Krueger and a big toe.”

 (A very rare occasion when Tommy bent the rules for the sake of letting Ellie show them both how horrid the youngest Gusler is. Her requests to download Fishdom on his phone to play while she’s in the car have been met with a resounding no .)

“Hm.” Joel grunts, which definitely counts towards the affirmative. Ellie nods, a little more vindicated. “It’s one night. You’ll be fine.” 

She sighs, pained. “I will not be fine. I am being exposed to my generation’s equivalent of my father. Maybe our samples got mixed up in paternity test land, and his mother and my father were having terrible sex this whole time. Do you think he calls her Pam in bed? Pammy? Green Eggs and Pam? Maybe she was the real Guzzler this whole ti-”
“That’s enough.” Joel sounds a little grossed-out, which is also how Ellie feels. She’s unclear on why she does this to herself. Maybe she’s internalising the external grossness of the outfit the First Lady picked out, yet again. 

It’s a navy blue set, a skirt that finishes below Ellie’s knees and a blazer- a fucking blazer- with gold buttons. She feels like she’s interviewing for a secretary position, which is a way Ellie had never anticipated or wanted to feel. 

“I look like I do Model UN,” She complains. 

“Maybe it’ll make you more diplomatic,” Joel replies unsympathetically.

“Terrible comeback. Embarrassing.” Ellie frowns, walking past him into one of many drawing rooms. 

Ellie is very aware that it isn't cool to judge people by first impressions, or by their looks, but Alistair proves her initial thoughts just about as soon as she has a conversation with him. He thinks he’s smarter than her, he thinks she could learn a lot from him, he thinks that this outfit makes her look too short, ‘and not in an attractive sort of way’. Ellie wants to tell him that her pronunciation of his last name makes it sound like he gives out copious amounts of blow-jobs, but somehow she doesn’t think that will get her father to give her phone back. 

The adults talk corruption (or business dealings, whatever) in the next room while the two teenagers are left to chat. Alistair very badly wants to discuss all the Ivy League colleges he’s been offered admission to, and his political views, which exist within a very small spectrum ranging from racism and sexism to homophobia and transphobia, with a sprinkling of xenophobia in the mix just for the fun of it. Ellie sits in a position Christine told her was very unladylike and pretends she’s jamming piss-flavoured dynamite into his stupid mouth, particularly on the few occasions when he thinks he’s probably the coolest, most revolutionary teenager of all time for taking swigs from a silver flask with his name engraved on it. 

“You have a flask with your- a seventeen-year-old’s - name on it?” Ellie asks him, unimpressed, between spiels about the state of competitive sport these days, and why female sports just aren’t fun to watch. Alistair’s wise advice is that they would get more viewers if they didn’t cover up so much.

“It’s real silver. My parents bought it for me.”
“Great parenting. It’s incriminating evidence.”

“Yeah, because I’m getting arrested. The only reason I’d go to jail is if some girl falsely accused me of-”
Ellie tunes out until they’re called in for dinner. Alistair gets up in a rush, heading into the dining room and leaving his flask on the magenta cushions of the couch. It’s not a complicated equation; Ellie is bored out of her mind and she’s a little suspicious that it might just be water- thus, a chance to make him look stupid later- so she takes a swig.

Definitely not water. She muffles her coughing into a pillow and waits for her eyes to stop tearing up, then drinks again and handles it better. She’s drunk before- Riley stole stuff from the Kwongs all the time, and sometimes they’d share a little. Riley always said she didn’t want to corrupt Ellie too early, at thirteen. But what difference did it make, in the end?

Ellie thinks of Riley sitting between their bunk beds, opposite Ellie, muffling their laughter so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Smiling in that happy, blissed-out way she did when they were tipsy, or it finally felt like summer again, or they walked past that Danish pastry place on the way home from school. Like everything was going right.

Ellie drinks once more. She stows the flask in the inside pocket of her blazer- already a little baggy, fitted to someone with a little more going on in the boob department than Ellie. She’s pretty sure Christine does this on purpose to embarrass her. Doesn’t matter; it’s working in Ellie’s favour right now, and she’s not planning on doing anything to get herself in trouble. She wants her phone back. She just needs something to take the edge off of the night.

At the table, someone immediately launches into a tirade about pride month, she pretends to drop something under the table, and takes two more sips from the flask. The sounds of people’s voices buzz together pleasantly in a big old bigot soup. Even if Ellie strains, she can’t quite make them out, and it’s a beautiful freedom from feeling so trapped inside this room. She’s not even really here anymore, just a body in a seat. Then a body in the bathroom, when she excuses herself and has several more swigs. The shapes of people waiting outside the dining room doors don’t resemble Joel, so she’s unabashed about stumbling a little as she walks past them. 

She sits down with a bump. Christine kicks her leg to get her attention, but Ellie tucks her feet under her chair and ignores it.

Pamela speaks to her. Ellie turns very slowly and asks the woman to repeat herself. She’s not fully blackout, yet, although she suddenly wants to be. Fuck the phone. She just needs an excuse to have a bit more, enough to blur the night together properly until she wakes up tomorrow. It’s so nice not to have all the noise in her head, for once. Maybe she should have a flask with her name on it. 

“I was asking what your plans are for after school, Ellie,” Pamela says, a little louder. She’s not a bad person, but Ellie hates her a bit. Did you know that your son thinks you’re worth less than any man at this table?

“Yeah.” Ellie replies cleverly. People look at her expectantly, and Alistair snorts. She looks over her shoulder at him. She’s angry, maybe, somewhere inside herself, but it all feels far away enough that she can make herself smile. “I think I’m going to go to prison.”

There’s a brief silence, then Pamela laughs in a forced, hopeful sort of way. Christine is holding the stem of her wine glass so tightly that her fingers are white. “Why’s that?” 

“Uh… homosexuality. Sooo much lesbianism. Probably gonna be illegal by then- that’s the plan, right daddy-o? Mr President?” Ellie laughs at herself, then at the horrified faces of everyone at the table. It’s like she’s told them she’s going to become a serial killer. She laughs harder, in a way that Christine would probably call inelegant. 

Ellie’s never called herself that- gay , not inelegant- out loud. She didn’t actually mean to, and she knows she’ll regret it more than she can think about. It was meant to be just for her, even despite the First Family’s comments and knowledge of one picture on Riley’s now-deactivated Instagram account with the two girls holding hands. It was meant to be Ellie’s. Fuck. Something like the painful exhaustion she feels waking up in bed most mornings reaches in between her ribs and presses cruel, cold hands to her spine. Nothing’s as funny, suddenly, because now nothing belongs to her. Not her fucking phone, not the word for whatever she feels towards girls, not Joel or Tess or Tommy because they’re all busy belonging to each other. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Please excuse Ellie,” The First Lady interrupts the stiff silence, “She’s had a difficult upbringing.”
“Of course-” Pamela begins, but Ellie interjects.

“‘Had’ is past tense, Christine,” She says, a little louder than she means to. She sways in her seat. “I am having a difficult fucking upbringing.”

Her father is suddenly next to her, grabbing her arm and making Ellie jump from fright. It’s like he knows exactly where David’s faded bruises are, digging his fingers in. “My daughter was brought up without the good lord in her life- we’re working on instilling some values in her, but you’ll have to excuse her behaviour. It’s an uphill battle.” He gets a few sounds of sympathy for that, and Pamela puts her hand over the cross necklace on her chest.

“Says you, Mr Adultery,” Ellie slurs. He yanks her to her feet. 

“I’ll deal with this and be right back, folks,” Her father says, pulling her behind him. Ellie trips- a second too late, she sees Alistair’s foot outstretched in front of her. She hits the ground with a thump. Everyone gasps like the audience of an 80s family sitcom. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Alistair says. He crouches next to Ellie and puts his hands on her shoulders, pressing her down for a second. “Nice flask, dyke.” He hisses, too quiet for anyone to hear ( would they even care? ), reaching into Ellie’s pocket and pulling out his flask. He tucks it away and offers Ellie to her father. “I’m so sorry, Mr President.”

“It’s not your fault, son. She’s had some… mental problems since the death of a friend last year- you know how the foster system is, all those youths doing drugs. It’s lucky for Ellie  that we pulled her out of it, but as you’re all now aware: there’s plenty of work to be done. One moment,” He leers at the table and drags Ellie from the room. 

“Let go of me,” She mumbles. They’re in a new room now, though the rapidity of her father’s exit from the dining room is making the furniture spin. She thinks it might be another sitting room. The door is closed. 

“I took you into my home, and this is how you repay me?” Her father is close, cold, furious. Ellie falters. She feels a little ill- potentially not drinking or eating anything but hard liquor in the past hour has that effect. “Look at me when I speak to you.” 

He looks over his shoulder, letting out a long breath. 

“You’re a disappointment, even within your circumstances. Pathetic child . Do you have any idea how much you’ve embarrassed your mother and I?”

Not my mother.

“Do you? Insolent, disrespectful girl!” 

He’s louder now. Ellie wants to move away. She wants Joel to go with her up to her room and to tell her she did a good job getting through the night, a compliment in that short, unexpected way it always is with him. Joel doesn’t lie and tell Ellie she’s great when she isn’t; he’s pretty fucking irritable, mst of the time, without sparing the air to coddle her with false affirmations and lies. But he’s told her a couple of times that her drawings ae actually pretty damn good and she’s thought about it for ages since, and he laughs at her funnier jokes (even when he pretends he doesn’t), and he tells her she’s done well getting through things.

The man in front of her is not that way. Ellie’s heard and watched him lie on national television, so if he’d ever given her something like a compliment she wouldn’t believe it anyway. The only real thing about him is his insecurity, the fear of caring about something that he couldn’t compose a plastic speech for, the hatred of things he doesn’t understand. It’s what he lives off of, what he has dinnertime conversations with his friends about, what his campaign rests on. He’s a hateful person and it inspires something similar in Ellie. She doesn’t want him to think she’s doing well because that would mean she was doing something the way he would, and the idea that she’s inherited any part of herself from him is terrifying. 

“Fuck you,” She manages. His eyes widen and narrow like the lens of a camera, like he’s choosing what to focus on. What part of her to ruin. 

You’re so fucking dramatic, he can’t ruin anything that matters. 

Her father’s nostrils flare. “You will apologise to Mr and Mrs Gusler, as well as their son, the next time we see them. And you will stop this little rebellion routine that you picked up.”

“I’m never gonna -”

“ You will do it or so help me god I will resort to reparative therapy!” He shouts, loud enough that it hurts Ellie’s ears. She flinches back. “I will place you in an institution that will show you the meaning of a God-serving lifestyle, once and for all. I should’ve done it before now- whatever perverted relationship you had with that drug addict-”
“Don’t fucking talk about Riley!” Ellie pushes him clumsily in the chest, enough that he stumbles back a few feet before he strides forward and backhands her across the face without any hesitation. 

Ellie’s head cracks to the side, the force of the blow throwing her off her feet. She hits the ground again, the ache of the last time intensifying and making her cry out- a short, ragged, embarrassing sound through her teeth. Her ears are ringing, her breathing is too loud, too quick, her hands are shaking, she can’t fucking inhale propoerly . There’s an earthquake happening in her chest. Somewhere towards the surface, her right cheekbone explodes into a cacophony of stinging and throbbing and aching which bleeds into her eye socket and down her jaw.

Ellie stares at the scratchy beige carpet, blurred by tears. The world is all out of focus. Her right ear is hot and hurting.

Then the carpet stains dark crimson, and she realises her cheek is bleeding. Her father wears rings- they must’ve cut Ellie when he hit her. She tries to process it and can’t, because he hasn’t really made her bleed before, and that’s not so easy to cover with makeup. 

The four other times he’s slapped her across the face, it’s been as a reaction to something Ellie said- something disrespectful, probably. She earned it, is what she’s always assumed, and it’s never been so hard. This time is unfair. He said shit about Riley, threatening the kind of stuff that people only whisper about these days. And he made her bleed. 

“Get up.” 

The makeup artists have concealer specifically for Ellie that balances out any bruises before public appearances. She isn’t sure what they’d have for a cut like this.

“Get up, and stop snivelling. I can’t even look at you right now,” Her father spits. “However sorry you’re feeling for yourself, just remember everything I saved you from. This is a valuable lesson for you, my girl.” 

With that final, terrible word of possession, he’s gone. 

It takes a long time to get to her feet. Ellie thinks that she’s crying for a lot of it, pain and anger mixing with the alcohol in a burning, damp way that makes her face crumple up again and again, no matter how she tries to stop it. She presses her hand to her mouth to muffle the sounds and finds that it hurts on the right side, the inside of her cheek bruised by her teeth. Her salty tears sting the cut on her cheekbone. 

She uses the wall eventually, pressing one side of her body against it and staggering to the doorway. The guards outside don’t look at her. She’s sober enough to see the way they avoid seeing, understanding what’s just happened. They don’t want to help her. She must seem pathetic to them. How much did they hear?

“Fuck, what happened to you ?” Ellie turns, praying for a kind face, but it’s Alistair on his way to the bathroom, unsteady on his own feet. He smirks at her. “You’re bleeding, did you know?” He motions at his own cheekbone smugly. Ellie stares at him and wishes she’d waited to cry until she was back in her own room. His voice grows more arched, less false sympathy and more plain contempt. “I don’t know who taught you manners- or forgot to, I guess- but admitting to being a dyke at a dinner table with some of the most influential people on the planet is not polite. Must be the influence of your crackhead friend, and look what happened to-”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before Ellie’s lunging at him, her movements clumsy and stilted but forceful. He’s drunk, too, and unprepared. Less angry. She lands one proper punch to Alistair’s nose and hears a satisfying crunch before there are stronger arms around her middle, tearing her off of him and away. Ellie kicks and scratches, vaguely aware that she’s screeching and howling like a wild animal. She must look insane. Alistair’s face certainly says so, as he clutches his nose with one hand. 

“You bitch !” He says, voice trembling.

She’d expected it to be her father taking her back into the same room, perhaps to kick her with his shining black shoes. She’d thought he might, for a moment. He wouldn’t be able to make her regret what she’s done, but Ellie is afraid. Admitting it can soften the pain of letting resolve break, she knows.

But they’re moving upstairs, suddenly, and the arms around her are not punishing or hurting Ellie, they’re warm and steady. She looks down and manages to make out a familiar hand, a broken watch.

“Joel,” She says dumbly. Where were you?

“Almost there.” He says. His voice is hard. It reminds Ellie of their conversation a few weeks ago, the thing he threatened. She’s a tough person, but she isn’t sure she can handle another beating for getting drunk. Maybe he’ll save it until tomorrow if she’s upset enough. 

“What the fuck happened?” Tess asks, suddenly beside them as they enter the hallway with Ellie’s room on it. Ellie doesn’t catch what Joel says, but Tess swears again. 

Joel sits Ellie on the edge of her bed and spends a while looking at her, either trying to decide how drunk she is or how badly she’s hurt. She can feel dried blood, sticky on her face. How long was she in that room, trying to push herself off the floor? It’s an embarrassing thought.

Ellie very determinedly doesn’t cry. 

“Ouch.” She says, trying to make it sound dry and deadpan. No big deal. It comes out worse. 

Tess and Joel squat in front of Ellie. Weirdly, she’s not sure if she’s ever seen them in the same room before. “Drink. You need to hydrate, kiddo,” Joel presents her with a glass, which Ellie makes no move to take. He and Tess exchange a look, which turns into Tess taking the glass and holding it to Ellie’s mouth until she’s gulped something down.

“That’s good,” She says lowly. “Better, right?”

Ellie nods, which is a lie. She feels infinitely more shitty than she’s felt in a very long time. “So better.”

Tess smiles a little. It’s not genuine. “You are one weird kid, you know that?”

“It’s my brand.”

“Better than drinking at fourteen being your brand, right?”

“Yeah.” Ellie concedes, a little too full of everything else to take in what Tess is saying beyond being angry with her. That’s not good. If she doesn’t like Ellie, and Joel doesn’t like Ellie, then there’s only one person left in the whole world who does. “Where’s Tommy?”

“Tommy’s at home, Ellie. He doesn’t work nights.”

“Ah, yeah, true.”

“We’re going to clean this up,” Joel says, catching her eye, “Might hurt, but you’ll feel better after. You got it?”

“You got it, dude.” Ellie says. “...Like on Full House. Olsen twins.” 

“Uh-huh.” Joel agrees, pulling a first-aid kit out of nowhere and opening it. Tess stands up straight, breathing slow in a way that Ellie knows is practised.

“I gotta be outside. Call me if there’s-”

“Yep. All good.” Joel hardly glances at her as she leaves the room, busy soaking some cotton wool in something from a bottle. Ellie wants so terribly to be sober. It’s embarrassing- she caught sight of herself in the glass covering a portrait on the way up, and she looked like a mess. Blotchy, bloody, pathetic. 

“Are you mad at me?” She says to Joel, sounding like a little kid. Ellie clears her throat and tries again. “Like, are you really angry?”

Joel’s eyes flick up to meet hers for a second. “What? No, I’m not mad.”

“But I’m drunk.”

His brow furrows slightly. “That’s not ideal, I guess. Does it feel as good as you were hopin’?”

Ellie thinks the answer is pretty fucking obvious. “No.” 

“There we go, then.” He taps- pats, maybe- the side of Ellie’s leg. “Lesson learned.”

“Tess was mad.”

Joel takes a deep breath.“She isn’t mad at you. It’s not unusual to have issues with kids bein’ drunk. I’m pretty damn sure I made that clear about myself, too.” His tone isn’t angry at all. Light, even. Maybe Ellie’s missing something. She chews on her lower lip and thinks hard.

“So you’re not happy.”
Joel grimaces. “That is correct. But I’m not angry, Ellie.”

“I would rather know about it if you’re planning on- you know, later.” Ellie mimes a hand swiping across her face. “I’m not huge on secrets. Fun fact about me.”

Joel stops doing the cotton wool thing and stares at her, suddenly serious again. “Why would I do that?”

She tries to give him one of his Looks, but it hurts a bit so she avoids his eyes instead. “It’s what you said you would do. Remember? After I smoked that joint?” 

“Ellie, what the hell are you talkin’ about?” Joel clicks, catching Ellie’s attention when her eyes wander. “Look at me. I am never going to hit you. What gave you that idea?”
Ellie avoids facing what he’s saying and huffs. “You’re just saying that ‘cos you feel bad for me right now.”

“I’m not. Why-” He pauses, glancing down for a moment. When he speaks, it’s slow, like he’s being careful. “What did I say that made you think I would do somethin’ like that?”
Ellie thinks for a while, trying her best not to sway where she’s sitting. Turns out that getting slapped in the face does sober you up a bit, just not enough to not embarrass yourself.

“Nothing bad. You just said next time I got high- or, not-sober, I guess- you would ‘make me regret it’. So. You know, that would be a little bit fucking regrettable.” 

Joel has this odd, very un-Joel-ish expression on his face that Ellie doesn’t like at all. It’s too much to think about, too much to feel right now. “I was thinkin’ push-ups, Ellie, not goddamn abuse.” 

“Push-ups?”
Joel nods. Ellie begins to feel even more stupid than she already does, a flush creeping up her neck. “This isn’t abuse.” She clarifies, after a second. “A slap to the face isn’t abuse.” She doesn’t really want to confront that idea, because that means the other things at other places fall under the same label, and Ellie doesn’t want to be someone abused . She wants to be a tough kid who doesn’t take anyone’s shit. Joel’s not allowed to pity her this way, nobody is.

Joel’s jaw tightens. “Ellie. This is not normal, and it damn sure isn’t just some slap. Nobody should be doing this to another person, let alone a fuckin’ kid.” 

“Swear jar,” Ellie says quietly. 

“I need to know that you heard me.” He urges. She nods stiffly. Even drunk, this is not a fun conversation. Joel holds up a wet piece of cotton wool. “I’m gonna clean it up, alright? You hold my arm and push it away if it stings too much.”

Ellie is very glad nobody knows how difficult it is not to flinch when Joel’s hand nears her face. She grabs ahold of his forearm and he stills like he’s waiting for her. 

“I haven’t got all fucking night, Joel.” She snaps. Maybe a little unfair, but he can take it.

It does sting, even if he is weirdly gentle, and Ellie can’t contain periodic hisses of pain. Joel must check if she wants to keep going about a billion times (twice), but she’s determined to get through this. And she does. Ellie Williams isn’t a fucking baby- still, when he’s done, it’s a relief and something of a disappointment to let go. Ellie isn’t sure that she would know why even if she hadn’t had anything to drink. 

“I’m actually almost sober,” She tells Joel helpfully, a minute after deciding the matter herself.

“Oh yeah?” Joel raises his eyebrows.

“Oh, yeah . Big time.” Ellie replies. He tries not to look amused by this. “I’m funny. You can admit that you think I’m funny, dude.”
“When did you decide that?”
“It’s so obvious. Come on, I see you trying not to laugh, motherfucker.”

Joel settles into his most deadpan frown and stares at Ellie. “I’m not trying not to laugh.”

“Believable. You’re a great liar. Have you thought of working for the Secret Service?”
“It has occurred to me.” He grants, pulling out two band-aids. “Do you want to put these on yourself?”

Obviously, Ellie should be saying. What comes out instead is, “How responsible is it to let a drunk teenager put her own bandages on? Come on, man, stop skiving off.”

“I was under the impression you were ‘almost sober’.” Joel rolls his eyes. This time, Ellie does flinch a tiny bit when he comes close to her face, and she knows he sees it because he’s even gentler than before. She can feel the bruises throbbing under her skin, more as Joel applies a salve to them a minute later. 

He moves away and sits on the floor in front of her, packing up the kit. Ellie finishes her water in the hope of rejecting all the fucking emotions that have decided to re-emerge the minute she felt Joel’s hands on her skin, but it doesn’t quite get her there. He shouldn’t have been so fucking kind about it. It should’ve hurt her more, felt less like he was taking care. She should be sober for this conversation, but somewhere in her chest she’s sure that she will never have any kind of real conversation that way. She’s incapable. Maybe she’s a cold person, like Joel was before. 

“...Do you and Tess and Tommy talk about me behind my back?” 

Joel looks about as confused by the question as Ellie feels. Weird fucking thing to ask. “In what way?”

“Like, do you tell them about this?” Ellie motions at her face. “Would you, if Tess hadn’t already seen me?”
“Tess would probably wonder why your face was all bruised up. It’s a safety issue, so… yes. I would tell them.”

“What about me crying about it?” Ellie blurts. “What about all the not safety issue things?” 

Joel furrows his brow, his expression overwhelmingly too complicated. Without much warning, Ellie feels twin tears leak down the sides of her face and doesn’t bother brushing them away because she can feel more coming, feels the sob in her throat ready to rip itself free at any moment. It’s all happening to her a bit quickly, much too fast for Ellie to organise herself back into a neutral mood with a bad joke or a snarky comment.

“I don’t tell them things that I don’t think you would want me to.” Joel says finally. “And neither do they. Why are you so upset about it, Ellie?”
Ellie shakes her head. “It’s not that . It’s- Joel, I can’t keep this up.” She sniffles and turns away. Ellie knows she looks stupid when she cries, and even drunk that is not something she wants to repeat yet again with Joel. 

“Keep what up?”
“Any of this!” Ellie says dismally. “I wanna be done. With all of it- I don’t want there to be any fucking- fucking safety issues, I don’t want to be in this house, I don’t want to be- to be fucking anywhere. I don’t want people to talk about me.” 

“ Kid, you aren’t-”
“No, Joel, I’m not- this isn’t ‘cos I’m tired or drunk or something dumb.” Ellie explains as well as she can, unsure whether she’s speaking too loudly. It definitely is because of all those things. “I feel like this all the fucking time. Forever . I want out. This shit wasn’t meant to happen, not to someone like me. I’m not- like, I’m not made the way I need to be to survive it. And I can’t- I don’t want people to think about me or talk about me, except to say that I’m gone. I want to be gone.”

Joel is silent for a while. “It ain’t your job to worry about whether you survive it or not. That’s my role.”

“I didn’t mean it in a threat to my safety way, though-”

“I know how you meant it.” Ellie sucks air through her teeth at the sudden heightened volume, and Joel apologises immediately, softer where she expects him to double down. Is it more confusing because she’s been drinking? She doesn’t know why he’s still here. He’s cleaned her face, the job is done. If he’d left, the conversation would be over.

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of one hand, clearing her throat. “Um. TMI, maybe. My bad.”
“‘TMI’?”

Ellie crinkles her nose at him, pleased at the opportunity to feel something other than hopelessness. She’s 90% sure Joel knows what it meant and is just trying to change the subject, which is fair. She always overestimates how much people want to hear her talk. “Too much information. I thought spies were meant to be really good at acronyms. Decoding, and stuff.”

“Well, I’m not a spy,” Joel reminds her. “It’s…” He sighs, glancing down. Huh. Why change the subject if you’re just going to keep acting all emotional? “Not ‘your bad’. It’s my job to know these things and it was good that you told me. You’re… doin’ well, Ellie.”

Ellie doesn’t quite dignify that lie with a response, sure that her appearance will be enough to reassure him of the opposite. People who are ‘doing well’ don’t get drunk, out themself to an extremely conservative audience and admit their somewhat death-oriented inclinations to a security guard. 

“Alright.” Joel nods once at nothing in particular, getting to his feet. “Time to get some rest.”

“Sure. Okay.” Ellie nods too, and for a second she’s sitting there like a fucking bobble-head until Joel puts his hand flat against the space between her shoulder-blades and takes Ellie to her room. It’s not painful, doesn’t burn like his hands did on her skin when she was anticipating more hurt. It’s solid, firm. Joel has big hands. She’s said he looks like Mickey Mouse (overstatement, but still funny). 

It’s nice, actually.

“I’ll be outside with Tess for an hour or so. Use the phone if there’s anything you need, I mean it.”
“Yeah.” Ellie mumbles, with no intentions to do so. She’s revealed enough of herself to last her the next ten years, as far as she’s concerned. 

“And I’ll be here tomorrow. We’ll take a few days off from self-defence, I think.” 

Ellie wants to argue, but she also wants to sleep. “Fine.”

She’d been pretty sure the solution to this kind of shit would be more self-defence, but maybe she’s looking pathetic enough that Joel now considers her a lost cause. She’ll have to find a time to prove him wrong. If he gives up on her, she might as well do the same.

Ellie gets into bed fully clothed and stares at the ceiling. In her peripheral vision, Joel fixes her with an expression she can’t see but somehow feels. 

“Goodnight, Ellie.”

“Yeah, night.” She has to wait longer than she expects to hear the bump of her sliding door against the wall.

Chapter Text

“You’re a little bitch-boy. It’s completely medicinal!” Ellie tells Joel as he removes the stash of weed from her duffel bag and holds it up in front of her, looking significantly less patient than he did when he first woke her a couple of hours ago. 

“What did I tell you about smoking this stuff, Ellie?”
Ellie crosses her arms. “Wasn’t going to smoke it. You’ll notice there’s brownie mix in that bag as well.”

Joel removes the brownie mix and gives her a hard look. Ellie decides this is probably a good place to leave the conversation.

“Okay, fine! Sorry, I’m sorry,” She huffs, making a grab for the bag and missing so hugely that it’s borderline embarrassing. Joel puts the weed in his pocket and turns back to her duffel bag. “Are you gonna smoke my shit?”
“No.”

Ellie narrows her eyes. "Super believable, man. Good stuff."

Joel ignores this and keeps rifling through her stuff.

“I don’t even know why you’re checking my bag, man, I don’t have any contraband in there! At least, not anymore .”

“Now, why don’t I trust you?” He asks. Ellie doesn’t do well with rhetorical questions. 

“Because I’m a girl and you’re a misogynist.”

He glances over his shoulder. “I thought we agreed you would stop makin’ that joke.”

“That was before you stole my baking supplies.” 

“M-hm. Where’s the sunscreen I gave you to pack?” Joel changes the subject unwelcomely. 

“Um.” 

“Ellie.”

She shrugs. “I used it all?” 

Joel takes a deep breath, the I’m trying not to show that I’m mad at you kind he’s been doing a lot recently. It’s unsettling. “No you didn’t. Go on, find it. I gave you a packin’ list for a reason.”

Ellie rolls her eyes, heading back into her room. “Yeah, the reason is that you’re a freak,” She mutters. 

To be fair, the list was probably smarter than Ellie’s tactic. Upon waking up and realising she had not fulfilled her promise of being 1000% ready to go at nine o’clock this morning, Ellie spent around fifteen minutes shoving whatever she saw first into her bag until it would only just zip up. She should’ve been smarter and lied to Joel when he asked if that was a goddamn lamp in her bag because it’s led to a search through her stuff more thorough than the fucking Spanish Inquisition. Her decision to replace any toiletries with twenty-two of her favourite comic books was met with the threat not to let her take Pun Intended (Volume Too) if she doesn’t get her packing list and comply with it.

When she returns a minute later with the sunscreen and some real clothes, Joel has laid all eleven of her favourite massive t-shirts out on the bed and is glaring at them. 

“You can take five.”
Ellie frowns. “Eight.” 

“Five, and pack some goddamn shoes. Those are not suitable for a lake.” He points at her lime-green fluffy slippers. Ellie mostly wore them because Joel hates them and pretends not to (with decreasing commitment), so this isn’t a huge loss. “Remind me why you packed a whiteboard.” 

Mini whiteboard. Ellie’s not insane. “Split-second decision.”

“And the forks?”

“Split-second de-”
“We have cutlery at the house,” Joel interrupts. “We’re already runnin’ behind schedule, Ellie, I thought I told you to do this two days ago.”

“But what if I wanted to use my mini whiteboard in that time?” Ellie asks innocently. “You know, there isn’t any actual schedule to follow except the imaginary one you have in your smooth, tiny brain. It’s not like there’s a welcoming ceremony to a lakehouse in fucking Virginia.”

Joel does not appreciate this comment, something he makes clear in the fifteen minutes he spends repacking her duffel-bag and shit-talking her vacation priorities; the three empty Coke cans are a low point. Thankfully he leaves the room as soon as she mentions tampons and tells her to be downstairs in thirty seconds. She counts forty-five just to spite him.

Tommy’s driving the entire four hours, which is probably a good thing. Ellie’s struck up a bet with him that he can’t convince Joel (unfortunately also coming in their car, while Tess travels with the rest of her detail) to stop for fast food three times on the trip, which he definitely can’t, especially now that Ellie’s put Joel in this mood. He also let her add some of her favourite songs to a playlist- she tried to secretly remove a few of the more horrific country music selections, but the curse of constantly being around people trained in observation became very clear when both brothers caught her immediately. Whatever. It’s better than nothing. And Tommy says if Joel’s enthusiastic enough about a song he might actually sing along to it.

Despite her disappointment that Joel hasn’t decided to become incredibly chilled about drugs very quickly, Ellie would be lying if she said she still hated him. Something shifted after the Gusler dinner, she thinks, but it’s not such a big difference that she can be sure it wasn’t already happening before that. He’s been… easier. Gentler, as revolting as that sounds, but not enough that he’s nice. Nice would suck.

It's more like he's careful. He ignores her less, for one. Ellie was being all weird and jumpy for a couple of days after the stupid getting-hit-in-the-face thing, and Joel somehow made a totally false connection between moments of freaking out and him being annoyed at her, so he's cut that out- showing that he's irritated, not feeling it. Ellie would never let that happen- not that he’s been very happy about her efforts to see how far she could push him. Turns out he wasn’t kidding about the push-ups thing. But it’s not like it hurts her, physically or emotionally, enforcing that. Joel says it's actually good for Ellie to get some 'dumbass energy' out. Confusing.

For the first while, Ellie thought his personality change was like pity, and she was so fucking angry that he’d decided to patronize her that she spent about three days being a total asshole to Joel (hence, pushups). But it’s not that. He still treats her like Ellie, and he still acts like he’s possessed by Squidward, attitude-wise. It’s a strange kind of different where she knows it’s changed, and she knows why, but there’s no fucking way she’ll ever bring any of it up because that would make it weird.

Besides, it’s not all good. He’s become a bit more annoying about therapy. Apparently being drunk during a conversation does not serve as a valid excuse to never discuss it again, and while Joel hasn’t pushed the topic with Ellie he somehow bumped up her therapy to a once-weekly occurrence, like it’s even his business. He said it was because she would miss two sessions while they were away, which is complete horseshit because Frank told her the change was indefinite. 

 ***

“Ellie! In the car, stop dilly-dallyin’.” Joel says. Ellie jogs down the steps to the car and rolls her eyes once he’s close enough to see it, scoffing. 

“Did you really just say ‘dilly-dallying’?” 

“Car.” He opens her door and points. 

“That’s a big word for you, well done,” She tells him.

Inside, Tommy looks at Ellie in the rear-view. Unlike his brother, he’s clearly enjoying this- she was pretty stoked to find out that Tommy and Tess will be part of her full-time team at the safehouse, along with Joel, while the other security people will be staying in the nearby town and taking three-day shifts. It’s the least crowded she’s felt in months. 

“You ready to go, hon?” He grins. 

“Yeah. Step on it, I want to get out of here.” 

“Do not step on it,” Joel says, because he’s boring that way. Ellie kicks the back of his seat. 

“Do you want Mr Livingston to come out now?” She threatens. Tommy laughs and pulls out of the driveway. None of Ellie’s alleged family came to see her off, not that she cares. It’s actually a good thing . 

“How’d he get you to agree to the ‘no puns’ rule?” The better Miller asks. Ellie glances at Joel, shifting in her seat when he meets her eyes in the rear-view.

“I’m a very merciful person, actually.” She looks away. The truth is that it wasn’t really an ‘agreement’, per se - Joel said that there would be no puns for the first hour, and that was kind of the end of it. Ellie has this freaky thing where she simultaneously wants to annoy the shit out of him, and wants him to think she's not a bad kid. But Tommy doesn’t need to know that. “I like to take pity on the poor guy. Hasn’t got much going for him, otherwise.” 

Tommy chuckles while Joel gives Ellie a mild look like watch it. She cheerfully does not watch it, leaning forward between them and pressing play on the speakers. Unfortunately, it is not one of her cool beer uncle songs that starts playing (or a few choices from the Glee Cast to annoy Joel), but a slow acoustic intro that Tommy taps the steering wheel to. 

“Nice one, El.” He says. Ellie pretends to cut off both her ears and slumps in the backseat, pulling out a comic. 

*

They drive for two hours- the second full of puns that drive even Tommy to the point of madness- before Ellie’s stomach growls loudly enough to alert the entire state, and he pulls into a drive-through Mcdonalds before Joel can say no. He tries anyway.

“No.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Ellie chants from the back. “I want a twenty pack of nuggets.”
“Absolutely not,” Joel says firmly. 

“Sure thing, El-bell. Loosen up, brother,” Tommy says, elbowing the man to his right and putting his window down. 

Twenty-five minutes, one diet coke, and seventeen nuggets later (Tommy stole three, even though he had an entire big mac to himself), Ellie tries to pull the pun book out again and is met with twin frowns from the two men in the front. 

“Shit, I finally see the resemblance.” 

“Could we have a break from the joke-book?” Tommy asks as kindly as he can. Joel doesn’t bother asking, reaching around and snatching the book from Ellie’s grip, ignoring her sound of indignance. 

“No more puns for the time bein’. Get some sleep.”

Ellie scowls at him. “I’m not tired.” 

“Listen to the music, then.” Tommy suggests, as Afternoon Delight starts playing. Ellie nearly claws her eyes out. “This is a nice one, you might know it.”

“This is not a ‘nice one’, it’s a criminal offence. And I know you’re not playing the playlist I added anything to, because this isn’t even the Glee cast version.” She groans.  

Joel looks over his shoulder so she can see him roll his eyes. “Who’s ‘Glee Cas’?” 

“Glee cast. TV show, you would love it. Tommy, put on the fucking playlist we both added to, you traitor.” 

Tommy looks a little sheepish. “Alright, alright, that’s on me. I’m sorry. Joel, can you-?”
Joel grumpily takes Tommy’s phone and finds the playlist, clicking on it. Ellie glares at the screen between the two of them until one of her songs starts playing.

 ***

They arrive at the safe-house in the late afternoon, since Ellie insisted on stopping for two bathroom breaks that coincidentally occurred at fast-food chains and required copious amounts of chicken nuggets to account for the risk of asbestos in public bathrooms. 

They pass through a ridiculous security process (Joel puts a code and his fingerprint into a gate and it opens) and suddenly they’re on a dirt road, surrounded by trees that dapple honeyed light onto uneven brown earth. It’s sunny enough that she’s privately glad she brought some shorts. Ellie opens her window (finally, she’s allowed to do it the whole way) and smells the summery air, inhaling all the way. She’s never spent much time out of the city- never thought about it much, to be honest, but she likes this. There’s no lingering scent of concrete, and the heat of the sun doesn’t feel quite as sticky or filthy as it did in DC.

“Are you guys bringing me out here to kill me?” 

Tommy nods, sounding a little tired when he says, “You got me. That was my plan all along, Ellie-girl.” 

Frowning at his lack of enthusiasm for the joke, Ellie tries vocalising with the bumpy road, but Joel doesn't like that. "Shut up, kid," He tells her.

"You shut up, asshole. These are the vocals of a star."

Out the front of the car, Ellie catches sight of sunlight on water, bright in her eyes. She leans forward in her seat and watches as the car slowly nears a clearing, revealing a much broader expanse of water than she’d expected and a considerably sized house. 

There’s a hammock on one end of the front porch underneath a set of wind-chimes, opposite a bench big enough for three on the other side. Ellie wonders if that’s where Joel, Tommy and Tess will sit together and talk about whatever they usually do. Maybe even her. Not a good thought, it turns out.

The house isn’t clean in the sterilised way Ellie was expecting; it’s neat, sure, but the paint is chipped, dusty in some places. The stairs leading up to the wrap-around porch are worn, sunken towards the middle where people have climbed them for a number of years. There are fishing rods in a stand nearby. They aren’t brand new. Nothing is- it feels like a real place . People have been here, lived here.

Ellie gets out of the car and looks up at the house, seeing the noticeably newer tinted windows on both the first and second floors. “Who lives here?”

“You, at the moment. You gonna help me with the bags, darlin’?” Tommy pats Ellie’s shoulder briefly, and she turns to haul the stuff from the back of the car. Both Joel and Tommy’s bags are heavier than hers- feeling a distinctly gun-shaped imprint in the side of the older brother’s bag, Ellie understands why. 

“Can you teach me to shoot one of these big guns?” She asks Joel, whose joints click a little when he gets out of the car. “Might not be able to handle it much longer, with those old-man bones.” 

“I will not teach you how to shoot a ‘big gun’ after that, you little shit.” Joel grouches, moving past Ellie to bring the stuff into the house. She elbows him, rolling her eyes. 

“You’re no fun.”

“Aw, sure he is,” Tommy slings an arm around Joel’s shoulders. Joel looks mildly irritated. “You haven’t seen this guy playing poker, El.”

“You told me you didn’t know any card games!” Ellie says indignantly. On the few separate occasions Ellie has been bored enough to consider card games, Joel insisted that he doesn’t know how to play. Even when she offered to teach him (in a particularly low moment), he was unreceptive. “Liar !”
Joel shoots Tommy an irritated look as he carries his and Ellie’s bags up to the porch. “Thanks for that, Tom.”
“Anytime, brother.” Tommy smiles. “C’mon, Ellie, I’ll show you to your room.” 

Ellie follows him inside. The windows, dark from the outside, let plenty of sunlight into the well-furnished house. Tommy slips off his shoes by the door, so she does the same, following him past a living room, a large kitchen, and a bathroom on their way to the stairs. One of the walls bordering the staircase has a basketball-sized area that’s clearly been covered up with paint a slightly different white to the rest of the wall. Tommy catches Ellie looking and touches his knuckles to it.

“Did that when I was seventeen. Unlucky with a girl in town, punched right through the plaster. Joel was pissed.”

Ellie blinks. “This is your house?” She looks around, suddenly a little less at ease and a lot more curious. It’s one thing to stay in a used house for a few days- Ellie’s been an intruder in other people’s homes her entire life- but she doesn’t know this side of Tommy, or of Joel. She's unsure if she’s even supposed to look at anything, touch anything, if it’s all theirs.

“Kinda,” Tommy clarifies. “Belonged to an uncle. Joel and I came here plenty of times over summer when we were teenagers, if we could afford the flights. When he left it to us, neither of us really used it, especially after-” Tommy pauses, glancing down and shaking his head slightly. Ellie frowns, but he continues before she can ask. “We gave it to the Secret Service to use as a safe-house for the first families if need be. It’s pretty isolated, since there are only a couple other properties from here to the town, so it’s easy to secure.”

Ellie follows him up the stairs, onto the second level. There’s another couch area with a TV, stacks of DVDs, and a few doors to what she assumes are bedrooms.

“Big enough to house a few people. Guy before your dad used it a couple times for fishin’ trips, actually, same as we used to, and now we have a retired agent mindin’ it while it’s unoccupied.”

Ellie tries to imagine her father doing something as pointless as fishing, and can’t. It’s hard to even imagine him in the same room as one of these leather couches. “Nice.”

Tommy leads her to a room at the end of the hall, pointing out the bathroom that Ellie will use. The bedroom she’ll be sleeping in is plain, with warm white walls and shining, chestnut-coloured floorboards. There’s a desk below a large window on the far wall, and a chest of drawers in the same wood next to the bed. The sheets and blankets are dark green and white, simple and neat. Ellie immediately likes it better than the starchy, spotless room in the White House; at least here she won’t always feel like she’s dirtying something just by being near it. There’s a fan on the ceiling, but the room itself is cool despite the warm weather anyway.

“Nice.” She says again. Tommy leans against the doorframe and watches Ellie look around. 

“Joel thought you might like this room the best. Said pink walls weren’t your style.” 

It shouldn’t matter whether Joel knows that kind of shit or not. It’s the stuff you’d have to pick up after spending eighteen hours a day with someone for four months- it’s fucking normal, and Ellie still feels it layer itself over all the other Joel things she thinks about, a new rubber band on a ball that Ellie’s not sure she ever saw the inside of. 

So she nods, and pretends that there isn’t a tightness and a warmth fighting each other in her chest. “That’s true, yeah.” 

Tommy’s giving her a peculiar look. “I’ll let you settle in. Joel will be up in a minute with your bag, yeah?”

Ellie mumbles a goodbye and waits for Tommy to leave. She sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the window, cut into four by the white muntin crossed over the clear panes. Behind it, there’s a tree, moving with the summer air, casting patterned shadows a few feet into the room. Ellie stretches out her feet until the toes of her socks are brushing the edge of the ever-moving shapes, the outlines of tear-drop leaves and knobbled branches on the floor, desk and walls of the room. She wants to draw it. She hasn't wanted to draw anything for ages, but this room should exist outside of itself and Ellie's mind.

“What’re you doin’, kiddo?” 

Kiddo. “Nothing. Waiting for you to get up the stairs, Maria Branyas.” Ellie swivels where she’s sitting and watches Joel put her duffel bag down by the door. He leans against it the same way Tommy had, arms crossed. 

“Who’s she?”

“Oldest person alive.”

Joel sighs. “Tommy showed you the bathroom, and all that?” 

“Yep.”

Joel mistakes her shortness for anger, and maybe he’s right, but either way he grows a little firmer. “Ellie, there’s no point bein’ mad about the card games. I don’t like ‘em, is all. It ain’t personal.”

“What?” Ellie frowns, confused for a minute before she remembers what he’s talking about. “Oh, right. No, it’s fine, it’s no big deal.” 

It isn’t a big deal, but it’s another rubber band saying the opposite of what the last one did. He doesn’t actually give a fuck, he’s just trained to be observant. If he cared, he would’ve wanted to do that kind of mundane shit with you. Idiot. It’s a funny mixture of vindication and something like hurt which Ellie presses down into the mattress with both fists.

Joel stares at her for a second. There’s this rumpled off-guard-ness to him that she’s never really seen before. “...You alright?”

“Yeah, just about to fall into a food coma from all the nuggets.” She says quickly. “My stomach doesn’t mess around with that shit.” 

“Now, didn’t I tell you that would happen?”
“I was too busy listening to Santana and The Flash sing Smooth Criminal , Joel.” Ellie flops back on the bed and stares at the ceiling fan. “Chill out. I’m on vacation.”
“That’s what I came to talk about,” Joel says, a little of his usual sternness slipping back into his tone. Ellie doesn’t mind. She knows where she stands when he’s annoyed at her. “We need some ground rules.”

Ellie grunts, which Joel clearly doesn’t like. Hypocrite.

“Pay attention.” He waits for Ellie to prop herself up on her elbows before continuing. “As far as you’re concerned, all the same stuff we talked about in DC still applies. That means-”
“Yeah, I remember, jesus. No laughter, no fun, no-”

“Ellie.” Joel warns. She shuts her mouth and mimes locking it. “Better. Now, I know you know the rules while we’re there, but there are some new ones you need to follow. Listening?”
“Obviously.”

Joel ignores her tone. “First rule is that Tommy, Tess or I know where you are at all times. We’re not shadowing you or guardin’ your room the way we do back in DC, but you’re going to tell one of us if you plan on goin’ outside or inside.” Ellie’s surprise must show on her face, because he adds, “Frank thinks it would be healthy for you to have a while without someone at your back all the time, and I actually agree. So long as you prove you’re fine that way.” 

She nods and tries very hard to convince herself that any security guy would do the same thing. It’s not uncommon to consult someone’s therapist. Probably. And the ‘proving she’s fine’ likely has more to do with not getting assassinated than any significant recent conversations about Ellie’s regard for her own life. “Okay. Is that it?”

“No.” Joel replies, predictably. “But that’s the most important one.” His expression softens, and his tone loses its edge. “Otherwise, Bill’s asked that none of us track water into the house from swimming in the lake.”

Ellie dismisses the idea of swimming as soon as he mentions it. “The fuck is Bill?”

“He looks after the place during the year while it’s not bein’ used, sets up most of the security mechanisms. Very thorough,” Joel explains. From his expression, Ellie’s pretty sure he doesn’t like Bill that much. 

“Right. Is he here now?”

“No, he’s up to DC. It’s just us. And-” A door downstairs opens, and a minute later Ellie hears Tess speaking. She rushes off the bed, glad of the excuse to avoid any more pointless rules. “Hold on-” She ignores this.

“Finally, someone sane!” She heads downstairs, two at a time, ignoring Joel’s slow down and grinning at Tess when they lock eyes. “How was riding with the rest of the security detail?”
Tess gives her an expressive glare, dumping a mini suitcase by the door and kicking off her boots. “I told you, kid, they’re all business and no fun. Thank fuck I’m not living with them for the next ten days.”

“Hey, don’t underestimate Joel’s ability to be just as boring as the eight of them combined,” Tommy greets Tess from the kitchen. She laughs lowly.

Ellie can hear Joel coming down the stairs behind her, purposefully blocking his way until he nudges her aside. “Aggravated assault,” She complains. Joel gives her a brief Look before exchanging a tight nod with Tess. Awkward. Ellie glances between them. She doesn’t remember it being like this a few weeks ago.

“Watch it, Tommy,” He says. “I’m plenty capable of drivin’ back to DC myself if you somehow ended up at the bottom of the lake tomorrow mornin’.” 

“You’re the only one here who would sink, Joel,” Tommy comes out of the kitchen with oven mitts on. “The way you’ve been growin’ recently. Think it’s something we’ll blame on age, or just White House cookin’?”

Ellie heads towards Tess, pretending she’s not enjoying seeing Tommy and Joel actually argue a little after a very one-sided road trip of teasing from Tommy and largely silent grumpiness from his brother. 

“They can go for hours.” Tess says conspiratorially, giving an exaggerated sigh. “You want to go for a swim?”

The answer is a resounding no. Ellie shrugs nonchalantly. “Not in the mood to swim right now, but I’ll come sit on the edge of the water or something, I guess.” 

Tess nods. “Good idea.”

Ellie turns to face Joel, who is still bickering with Tommy. “Joel. Joel!”

“What ?” He turns, eyebrows furrowed.

“I am going outside, I repeat, I am leaving the building. Motherfucker.” She practically shouts. Joel waves her away, unimpressed. 

 ***

Ellie stays outside for hours, even when Tess retreats from the water to the cool shade of indoors after making her promise not to leave the porch. She sits on the hammock, changed into the jorts and a truly humongous yellow t-shirt, with bare feet dangling a few inches off the ground. It feels like the park- bigger, maybe, but the same slow-moving trees and sweet air. She’s vaguely inclined to push her thoughts towards sentimental bullshit, given the peaceful atmosphere and lack of anything else happening right now, but then there’s only one person who Ellie can afford to be sentimental about and that whole thing is well and truly fucked. Someone told her a while ago that Riley was ‘always watching, always around’ but Ellie’s old enough to understand that people just say that shit to feel useful. Riley’s not here. She’s gone.

So Ellie doesn’t think about it, or look for Riley in the evening sun. Instead, she watches the sky, coloured like a mango skin, reflecting on water as the sun sinks just below the trees. The low hum of cicadas starts up a little further into the greenery. A breeze shifts over the house, and Ellie's flyaways tickle her cheeks.

The place she lives is nobody’s home, it’s just a place to stay for a few years until you’re replaced. This house is a home. Ellie’s sometimes so jealous that she thinks her heart might stop beating.

Tommy and Joel were lucky to have grown up with a place like this to belong to, even if it was only sometimes. It’s a long way to Texas from here, a few hours on a cheap flight according to Tommy, but Ellie thinks she would spend every cent she had coming back again if she could. She wouldn’t ever want to leave. She doesn’t want to leave. 

The water stretching out in front of her is a reminder of what she can’t have, mostly because Ellie can’t swim. There's no crazy reason, no story, just that fact; she can’t swim because she’s been carted off to a series of different people’s homes since she was born and none of them had the time or the will to teach some kid that wasn’t theirs to do so. There was hardly any point in fucking Washington, or Baltimore. water here is nice to look at, but it breaks the fantasy that Ellie’s invited herself to enjoy, that she’s here because she’s meant to be. That she’s sitting in her hammock, more than a temporary occupant of space until the next kid of a president wants a vacation. 

The only things Ellie’s ever had that were really hers were the spot in the tree with Riley, some photos, and the switchblade that Marlene confiscated and locked away in a desk drawer the minute Ellie arrived at the White House. She wants more, selfishly. She wishes she had all this, a lake and a house and a bedroom decorated by the shadows of trees, sun and shade clinging to the floorboards. She wishes she had the life that comes with it. No presidents, no David, no fucking foster homes to move between. Just Ellie in her hammock in summer, ready to plunge herself into the lake and be able to swim as far as she wanted. 

She tilts her head back and looks at the awning of the porch, wood carved a little clumsily into rounded ridges all the way along and painted white. A supporting beam at each corner of the house, either side of the stairs too. A little worn- no, not worn. Scratched. Ellie leans forward. 

On the beam closest to her, near the top of the flat side facing the house, is a name and some numbers. Ellie squints, standing to trace the spiky carved writing with her finger. ‘Sarah M- 2001’, it reads, next to an attempt at something like a flower. Whoever did it- Sarah, presumably- wasn’t used to holding a knife, Ellie can tell. It’s endearing in a way people often aren’t, reminds Ellie of her own carving into hers and Riley’s tree. A sign that someone was there.

The last president didn’t have daughters, certainly none named Sarah, so it wasn’t his. Tess said that the guy who watches the house, Bill, doesn’t have family aside from a husband up north. Which leaves Tommy, Joel, and their uncle. And any other family. Maybe the uncle’s daughter? His wife? Did Tommy and Joel have a sister? Ellie wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be Tess at this point. 

“Hey.” Joel’s voice makes her jump, and she turns like she’s been doing something wrong. 

“What?”

His eyes narrow slightly, in suspicion or something else. “Didn’t mean to startle you. You want dinner?”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“The answer is yes. C’mon, you haven’t eaten since lunch.” He holds the fly-wire door open for her. There’s something different about Joel, just slightly less pent-up than. always. Ellie wonders if she’s ever seen him properly relax before. Even now, he double-checks the surrounding trees and lake before he shuts the door behind them both, shoulders raised. 

“Since my three lunches.” Ellie reminds him. He lifts an eyebrow.

“Nuggets, nuggets and more nuggets? How many food groups does that cover?”
“At least one. Since when do you give a shit about food groups?” Ellie says over her shoulder, heading into the kitchen before he can answer and inhaling deeply. “That smells fucking incredible, though.”

“Miller family special.” Tommy announces proudly, as Tess appears with still-damp hair. 

Joel busies himself getting out bowls and forks as she says, “Canned spaghetti?”

“With a secret ingredient.” 

Ellie looks at Tess. “It’s just parmesan cheese. I can see the packet.” 

“Hey, hey, watch it, Ellie-Bellie! There might not be enough for you in this pot if you keep givin’ up state secrets like that.” Tommy says. He reaches out, his hand quick enough that Ellie’s not even sure what he’s doing- probably ruffling her hair, or something harmless. Still, she flinches back so badly that she bumps into Joel, jolting the bowls in his arms and causing a loud clatter that seems to echo. 

“Oh,” She says after a second, trying to laugh on an exhale. It sounds more like an odd kind of groan. “Sorry, man, didn’t see you.” She turns and looks at a spot above their heads. 

Tommy is quick to apologise. “I'm sorry, darlin', I didn’t-” 

“No! No, it’s all on me, I don’t even- uh, I don’t know what the fuck just happened.” The second false laugh comes out a little stronger. Ellie can feel three sets of eyes on her, hot like a bright lamp on her skin. “My bad, I’ll just- I gotta- yeah.” 

She turns, the happy ease from just a minute ago dissipating. Everything is sharper, dark and either too cold or boiling hot. Ellie forces herself to leave the kitchen, to stop ruining their fucking night just because you can’t get a grip, and walks up the stairs, carefully not stomping so they won’t think she’s throwing some kind of temper tantrum. She realises a minute too late that she didn’t come up with a good excuse for leaving, planting both feet on one step and twisting the hem of her t-shirt in her hands. 

“Bathroom!” She shouts flatly, as if that’s fucking fooling anyone. Not her best.

It takes all of fifteen seconds for Joel to come into Ellie’s room. She’s on the floor on the other side of the bed, back pressed against the wall and knees to the bed frame. It’s cramped enough that it hurts a bit, the cool metal on her shins, which is enough to take Ellie’s mind off of the sharpness of everything else. The blur of the comic book in her lap, why it’s blurred, why everything’s blurred but too focused at the same time. 

“Ellie,” Joel says, walking around and crouching a short distance away from her like she’s a skittish animal. Stop treating me like a fucking bomb, she wants to snap, stop acting like I’m about to break in half. “That was a quick exit, back there.”

Instead, she says, “Not hungry. Too many nuggets.”

“Tommy’s sorry."

"Have you ever tried shitting out sixty nuggets? Not pretty."

"He isn’t going to hurt you, ever,” Joel replies, which is completely fucking unrelated to what Ellie’s said and she doesn’t want to have two separate conversations right now. 

“I’ll eat later.”
There’s a soft sound, and she forces herself to look up. Joel’s set down a bowl of pasta and a fork nearby. “Tess guessed you might prefer eatin’ it up here anyway. Tommy and she are eating together, it’s fine.” 

Ellie makes a sound of understanding and puts her comic down to pick up the food. It’s good, as expected, and she feels a pang of guilt in her stomach. “I didn’t mean to piss Tommy off or anything. It was a weird fucking way to react.” 

Joel doesn’t speak for a minute and Ellie thinks he might leave. She wouldn’t have been upset about it. She’s also not upset when he pulls the chair out from the desk and sits, sighing, like he’s going to give her a lecture about something. She’s definitely doing something wrong- being dramatic, being difficult, making Joel and Tommy regret taking her to a place that was theirs. It’s actually kind of fucking impressive that she’s managed to ruin this trip within twelve hours of it starting.

“When Tommy got back after his injury, after all the physical therapy, we would sometimes go and throw a football around in a park near our house.” Joel begins, voice quiet and controlled. Ellie freezes, caught between surprise that Joel is telling her something like this and the ever-present question of who we included. Tommy, Joel, and… Tess? Sarah, whoever she is? “He was fine, at first- he had nightmares, we both did, but things were better. Then one afternoon, down at the park, there was somethin’ different. He was on edge, nervous. I threw him the ball and he missed it- turned to go pick it up and somethin’ ‘bout the look of the dirt he was pickin’ it up out of, the sounds around him, made him sure he was back in Iraq again. Thought he was about to be hit by a landmine, get injured all over. It terrified him. He…” Joel rubs a hand over his jaw, and Ellie recognises an exhaustion in his face that she’s pretty sure runs bone-deep. “It took us days to get him out of it. We couldn’t force it. The fear, the memories of it, were set so deep into his brain that we just had to wait for it all to slow down.”

Ellie stares. “I didn’t know that.”

Joel nods, then glances at her. “Scars worse than his leg, inside his mind where we couldn’t reach ‘em. It took time. Tommy was embarrassed, made it worse when he couldn’t bring himself to ask for help. But he needed help, pullin’ himself outta that.”

It isn’t lost on Ellie that it’s the most personal thing he’s ever told her. Behind the sadness for Tommy’s sake, the questions about how he ended up here , there’s a flicker of something else. She knows she shouldn’t be pleased that Joel told her this. It’s horrible. She wishes it hadn’t happened. But it’s like a crack in the door of the club that he, Tommy and Tess are a part of. It’s a step towards something else, something better than the isolation Ellie knows and feels every day of her life. Everything in her wants to let herself understand what Joel’s saying here. Accept the olive branch.

“Is he okay now?” 

“He’s better. Much better, in the twenty years since. That’s why he’s been able to work in the job he has.” Joel confirms. “You ain’t dumb, Ellie, I know you see what I’m getting at here.”

“You want me to ask for help.”
“That, I do.”

She puts the bowl down and scrubs the palms of her hands over her bent knees. She’s pretty sure asking for help falls under being needy, and being needy means being pitied. Being dependent , which might be even worse. “Getting hit in the face and acting like a pussy about it isn’t the same as being in an actual fucking war, though.”

“Didn’t say it was- not that you’re actin’ that way, and I don’t want to hear you talk like that again. But Tommy didn’t get anywhere by actin’ like it wasn’t anything, and neither will you. It’s no crime to talk about it.”
“My next session with Frank isn’t until July.”

“I don’t mean Frank, Ellie. Lord knows you don’t tell him shit, anyway,” She looks up at the teasing lilt in his voice. Joel shoots her a challenging glance, lips just slightly quirked. “Do you?”
“What the fuck happened to patient confidentiality?”

“That would rely on you actually givin’ him something to keep confidential.” Joel retorts, then shakes his head. “We don’t need to talk about it now. I’m just sayin’ that I know how this goes. We don’t get anywhere running away from our problems.”

She frowns. “Isn’t this trip literally me running away from my problems?”
Joel’s expression hardens, if only for a second. “That man is not just a problem, he’s a threat. You know that ain’t what I meant.”

Ellie does know it. “Right. But I shouldn’t have reacted that way- to Tommy. He’s already got enough shit going on without me making him feel bad for being nice.” She pulls at a piece of hair near the side of her face, twisting it around one finger until it stings. “I don’t want you guys to think I don’t- that I’m not grateful, or whatever. You didn’t have to bring me here. I’m not… unaware, I guess. I dunno.” It shouldn’t be this fucking difficult to say thank you. Ellie presses the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. 

“I know. Tommy’s fine, it’s not your fault, kid.” Joel replies after a beat. “I didn’t just mean that you should ask for help, tellin’ you that story. Wasn’t the entire point.”

“What else is it, then?”

“... It’s been twenty years since Tommy got hurt, and he’s a happy man. You see that. What I’m sayin’ is that it’ll be alright. You’ll be alright.”

Ellie nods. Her chest aches. She's not sure whether Joel's aware of the lie, not sure if it's worse either way.

Chapter Text

It turns out that, three days into what’s meant to be a relaxing break, Ellie’s inability to swim is a much harder secret to keep than she’d anticipated. Made worse by Tommy’s undying enthusiasm for water-sports, and the increasingly suspicious looks that Joel and Tess send her way whenever Ellie refuses to jump off the end of the pier by the house.

“There’s probably poisonous algae in there!” She reasons, “I’m not about to get in that gross shit when I can cool down by staying inside. I like being clean.”

“You’ve been wearing that shirt for three days.” Tess reminds her. Ellie scowls. 

“This is so unfair. You’re ganging up on me!” She crosses her arms, still stubbornly in the doorway of the house while Tommy waits at the bottom of the stairs in his board shorts and a hat (it’s definitely a cowboy hat, no matter what he says; he found it in a storage space under the stairs and has hardly taken it off since). “I didn’t even pack my swimsuit!”

Joel glances up from whatever he’s reading on his phone. “Yes, you did. I made sure of it. And put some damn sunscreen on, I’m not dealin’ with your whining all week because you got burnt.”

“ Asshole .” Ellie hisses. “Try being on my side, for once.” He shrugs like he hasn’t done anything wrong. 

“C’mon, Ellie,” Tommy urges. “The water’s nice, it’s beautiful weather…”

“Are you a person or an advertisement?”

“What I am is a man in need of swimming.” 

Ellie waves him away. “Fuck off, then. Swim.”

Tommy whistles. “That’s some attitude for someone so short I could throw ‘em right into the water.” He takes a step closer. Ellie flips him off, backing away. 

“I know how to use my fists. Joel, tell him.” 

Joel gives them both an unimpressed look. He hasn’t swam yet, and Ellie’s unsure why she’s the one getting bullied about it when Joel has been the primary target for the past three days, something she has been very much enjoying. Why the fuck is Tommy suddenly so set on making her get in the likely-contaminated water? It’s blatant homophobia- or it would be, if they knew about that. 

Tommy grins, hands on his hips. “So do I, honey.”

“Not fucking happening. And I can hear you making your accent more southern on purpose. ‘Southern charm’ is a myth, motherfucker.” 

“Leave the kid alone, Tommy,” Tess fans herself with her book, sitting in the same hammock Ellie spends most of her afternoons in. Ellie’s getting whiplash just looking between her and Joel on opposite ends of the porch. 

Despite her top-tier observational skills, Ellie still hasn’t figured out what’s going on between them. She’d assumed plain dislike, but she knows how Joel acts when he dislikes someone and it isn’t this silent discomfort that he’s currently exuding. Her singular attempt to prompt something out of him about Tess was unsuccessful, to say the least, and ended with Joel basically surrendering her to Tommy’s three-hour explanation of football (Ellie actually isn’t that bored by it, but Tommy kept going off on tangents about his favourite players and it was much clearer when Joel re-explained it later on). 

It’s not that Joel and Tess aren’t civil. But it’s clear that, without Tommy, they don’t really talk much, which seems pretty weird for people who spent about twelve years relying on each other for survival and then several more years working together in the Secret Service. Ellie can’t figure it out- what happened, and when. It’s the latest addition to a frustratingly long list. Nearing the top of the list is Sarah, too, though that’s a little more out of boredom than urgency.

She’s meant to ask about whoever the girl is, but between arguments about swimming with Tommy and arguments about everything else with Joel (neither of them particularly upsetting) she hasn’t found a moment to ask if either of them knew the girl who engraved her name on the house in 2001. She might be a complete stranger to them, someone who snuck onto the property decades ago and carved her name there for fun. And if she wasn’t a complete stranger, what’s Ellie meant to do about that? She’s not involved in their lives the way they are in hers, it’s not like she’s entitled to access everything about them the minute she steps foot in a place that was once theirs. But she wants to know, wants access to just a little more than they’ve given her. It’s this weird space between feeling like she’s taking too much just by being here, and wanting so much more- wishing she wasn’t who she is and that she was allowed to be here for the sake of more than just professional concern.

* * *

Apparently Ellie's lack of obnoxious curiosity comes as a surprise to Joel, because he’s started doing that thing that happened for a while after the Gusler dinner where he comes and ‘checks in’ before she goes to sleep. Tonight, after several more diminishingly light-hearted (at least, from Ellie’s perspective) arguments with Tommy about swimming, he finds her sitting on her bed and flicking through Issue Seventeen of Savage Starlight. 

“Miller senior.” Ellie greets him, putting the comic face-down on the blankets before he even properly enters the room. “I’m gonna start thinking you wanted to have this room if you keep coming here all the time.”

He grants her a not-completely-irritated expression where most people would smile. Ellie’s pretty sure that if Joel actually did smile, she would combust on the spot, so it’s nothing to cry about. “It’s not a bad space.”

She nods, glancing around as if she hasn’t already examined every inch of it. “It’s cool, if you like wood.”

“True. That is true.” He lingers for a minute, like he’s not exactly sure what to do. It’s awkward; a somewhat new look for him. Ellie’s not sure when the cold hardness gave way to this- not that Joel’s not tough anymore, but he’s just a bit more than that now. Like an actual person. “You’ve been quiet these past few days.”
“Aren’t I always?” Ellie asks dryly. 

Joel, as usual, pays little mind to her sarcasm. “You’re not swimmin’, either. Would’ve thought you’d jump on the opportunity to get in the water, it bein’ as warm as it is.”

Ellie tenses, breaking eye contact as she fumbles for an answer. “Yeah, well, you thought wrong. Maybe you don’t know me that well.”

He’s taken aback by it, she hopes. Enough to drop the topic of swimming entirely. 

It’s not a big fucking deal. Obviously. It’s a skill Ellie doesn’t have, that millions of people don’t have, and it’s not like she’s really that ashamed. Only it would be humiliating to admit it to them, that she’s never learned to do something that they clearly expect. Maybe if it hadn’t felt like an assumption, or something, she would’ve mentioned it. But especially in front of Tommy and Tess, who have had the least amount of exposure to Ellie’s worst moments, she doesn’t want to look less capable than she already does. 

“Maybe I don’t.” Joel considers, instead of jumping to anger the way she wishes he would. Ellie waits for him to leave, growing steadily more bothered when he doesn’t.

“Was there something you wanted, or…?”
“No. No, nothin’.”

“...Okay.” 

“You know, I’ve never seen you use the pools back in DC, either. Seems like the kind of thing you would enjoy.” He stares at her. Ellie’s face feels warm, and she bristles.

“Well, we already established that you kind of know fuck-all about me, so-”
“Hey. Watch it.”

“ Fuck you, man.” She stands, jutting her chin out defiantly. “What’s the goal, here- what, you trying to get me to admit something? What are you even doing?”

Joel frowns, voice still low even with the fresh irritation on his face. “Why are you bein’ so defensive?”

“Because you’re fucking interrogating me about not swimming on a trip which I thought was supposed to be about relaxing! Fuck, can I get a break?”
“Now hold on-”

“No, fuck off! You can’t-”
“ Ellie . Take a goddamn breath and sit down, girl. Christ.” Joel doesn’t raise his voice much, but his tone is enough to shut Ellie up. She sits on the edge of the bed and glares at him. “Tell me what’s goin’ on, and drop the attitude. I’m not havin’ an argument with you tonight..”

“Nothing’s going on.”

His expression doesn’t change. “Try again.”

Ellie swallows and looks down, kicking her heels against the bedframe. “This is so fucking stupid.”

“We agree, then.” He says, “That’s why you need to stop acting like a five-year-old and tell me what the hell’s goin’ on.”

“A five-year-old wouldn’t swear.”

“A fourteen-year-old shouldn’t swear. We can discuss that as well, if you’d like.”

She narrows her eyes at him, forcing air in and out through her nose a couple of times before she speaks. “...You have to promise not to tell Tommy. Or Tess.”

Joel nods. “Alright.”
Ellie hesitates. “I- shouldn’t this shit be on my file, or something?”

He sighs and presses his lips into a line. “You tell me what it is and I’ll tell you if it came up.”

“...I don’t know how to swim.” Ellie says it so quickly that the words come out all jumbled, but Joel understands. “Like, at all. To the point of drowning immediately if I went in the lake, probably. So. That’s what’s ‘going on’. Not a big fucking deal.”
Joel, to his credit, doesn’t look surprised enough to make Ellie feel shittier than she does already. “Not on the file.”

“Obviously.” Ellie flops backwards on her bed, staring at the ceiling fan. “Your interrogation tactics could use a little work.”

“I got the information, didn’t I?” She gets up on her elbows, glowering at the cockiness all over his face. 

“Stop smiling, fuckface.”

“I’m not smiling.” Joel says, unfortunately truthful. “You’ll need to learn to swim.”

“Why?”
“Well, firstly, I think you might break Tommy’s heart if you don’t.” He supplies. Ellie rolls her eyes. “And it’s a safety issue. It’s a good skill to have.”

“I’ve been fine so far.”

“And you’ll keep bein’ fine on my watch, because you’ll learn. Tomorrow morning.”

She grimaces. “No. I’m not doing that.”

“It’s not a debate, Ellie. You need to know how to swim.”

“No I don’t! Stop being a dick.” Ellie pauses, then looks down and adds, “I don’t want Tommy or Tess to see. Or whatever.”
“Tommy and Tess are goin’ into town tomorrow for most of the day to consult on the security changeover. It’s fine.” Joel says, barely containing an eye-roll. “They’ll be out for the next few mornings reinforcing the area, too. Not that they’d care if they knew.”
“Don’t tell them,” Ellie warns. 

“I said I wouldn’t. But my not tellin’ them is conditional on you learning to swim. Clear?”
“This is an unbelievably shitty deal. I want nuggets to make up for it.”

Joel does not agree to her terms, big shocker. But somehow he’s come to the conclusion that Ellie will be learning to swim tomorrow, whether she likes it or not, and he will be teaching her, which is probably the worst part. Being taught by Joel to shoot a gun is fine, because it was cooler when he was that serious about something deadly. Being taught how to swim is another issue, because Ellie’s actually potentially maybe a little afraid of it and Joel is definitely not going to be the comforting type when she inevitably starts drowning. She’d be surprised if he didn’t just throw her in the water and tell her to stay alive for an hour (a slight exaggeration- however averse she feels to his swimming instruction abilities, Joel wouldn’t actually kill her. She hopes.)

* * *

“The water’s freezing.”

“You haven’t even felt it yet.” Joel follows Ellie down the porch stairs, pulling off his flannel so he’s just in a t-shirt and board shorts. She turns to face him. 

“I can tell by the aura. Are you gonna take off your shirt?” It wasn’t meant to sound so uncomfortable, but Joel’s expression tells her it was. “Not for a weird reason.” This is true. Ellie’s just not really in the mood to go full skin-on-skin if Joel has to rescue her, or something.

“I’m not plannin’ on it, no.”

“Okay, prude.” She comments lightly, taking a few more steps towards the lake’s edge. “It looks cold. Maybe we should postpone?”
“You can get in or I can carry you in, Ellie. Your choice.” He says flatly. Ellie gives him a dark look, edging a little closer until the water’s covering her feet. She’s opted out of jumping off the pier. “Keep going,” Joel encourages, in what is potentially the least encouraging tone ever. “Not deep enough to swim in yet.”

“You’re like a detective, it’s amazing. Nothing gets past you.” Ellie snarks, darting away when he moves closer until the water’s around her thighs. It’s cold, but not unpleasantly so, warm near the surface where the sun is hitting it. The dirt that was stirred up on their first couple of days has settled, and the water’s surprisingly clear. Ellie can see her feet, the red anklet around her right leg. She’s never been huge on jewellery, but she found it in the confiscation box at the last school she ever went to and wanted to take something as a souvenir. 

“Good.” She looks up at the word, a little caught off guard. Joel comes closer, enough to grab her if she starts drowning while she’s about two feet deep but not so close that Ellie feels uncomfortable. She wonders if it’s on purpose, if he notices those things the way she does. “How do you feel?”

“Cold. Glacial. Several of my toes have already been surrendered to the lake.”

“We’ll keep goin’ deeper, then.” Joel says, unaffected by Ellie’s potential loss of digits and moving forward until he’s up to his stomach. “C’mon. You can still stand here, it ain’t a big deal.”

“I know that,” Ellie says, despite the steady strum of nerves against her ribs. She’s not actually freaked out about being in the lake, it’s more about the whole ‘showing Joel something she is definitely terrible at’ thing. And so what if she likes being complimented by him? She’s allowed, probably.

The water gets deeper pretty quickly- now up to Ellie’s chest, she keeps her elbows above the surface and glares up at Joel. “Now what?”

“You look like a damn chicken, put your arms into the water. I’m assumin’ you’ve been underwater before?”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Duh. I’m not a freak.” It’s true- she may not have swum before, but she’s paddled around in kiddie pools when she was little and taken baths. She doesn’t want Joel to think she’s got a phobia of water. It’s only ever been something he’s implied when she’s gone a little too long between showers, and she’s 87% sure that’s a joke. 

His expression disputes her claim, but he nods. “Alright, that’s good. Kick off the ground so you’re floatin’ on your back, then.” 

Ellie stares at him. “Floating isn’t swimming. I didn’t sign up to learn to do nothing.”

“Now,” Joel insists, raising one eyebrow. “Or we can try again after you’ve run a lap of the lake, if you’d like.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “All five-hundred miles? Nice.” 

He clearly was not expecting her to know that information. “Might take you a few days. I think we’d both like to avoid that.”
Ellie makes a face at him, but does as Joel said and immediately gets a nose full of water. There are about five seconds of panicked thrashing before she’s hauled back to her feet, Joel’s hand warm around her arm. It doesn’t hurt, but Ellie pulls away from the contact as soon as she’s upright again. 

“Shit advice, man. I don’t float. Buoyancy is sitting at zero.” 

Joel looks less than pleased. “I didn’t tell you to put your head underwater, did I? You ain’t gonna float if you insist on inhalin’ half the lake.” Ellie rolls her eyes, still snorting out water. 

“I didn’t-”
“ Next time, don’t be so violent about it. You’re not doin’ a backflip, you’re just letting your legs float to the surface to match the rest of your body. Try it, go on.” He says, not without some frustration. Ellie flips him off and looks at the sky, squinting as she lets her feet leave the rough sand of the lake’s bottom and rise through the water. Her chest begins sinking, but before she can start moving her arms to keep herself above the surface, there’s a firm, steadying force at the centre of her back. Joel’s hand, once again. The water tickles around her knees as they breach the surface. 

“See? There you go.” Joel says mildly. There aren’t enough hours in the day for Ellie to come up with a non-mortifying way to ask him not to move his hand from her back, and certainly not enough time before he’s done it. She stares into the sun and feels slightly colder. But she’s floating. 

“Don’t get cocky. I might still drown.” She says, replacing whatever other gross sentiments want to bubble up. “Now what?”

“You won’t drown.” Joel sighs. “If you keep your posture right and your head tipped back, you can stay like this for a long time. It’ll use the smallest amount of energy possible and you can keep breathin’, so it’s useful.”

Ellie hums her understanding. “It’s fucking boring, though. Can I swim now?”
“I don’t know, can you?”

Turning her head sideways to glare at Joel proves a pretty dumb choice, but this time Ellie gets back to her feet without help. She focuses on the vindication of this achievement instead of thinking about the fact that Joel didn’t actually try to help her either. 

“Tell me how.” She says. 

Joel stares at her like he’s seeing something Ellie isn’t sure of, then looks away and moves sideways through the water, further out from the shoreline.

“You move your arms like this,” He demonstrates as he instructs her. He’s fast, clearly experienced at this. Ellie wonders again why he hasn’t been swimming until today. “And kick your legs. You won’t sink, you gotta trust that the water will hold you up if you also do half the work. You got it?”
Ellie watches Joel swim further and further away. He’s not ages away- he’s not going to disappear anytime soon, but something hurts very suddenly. She can’t reach him. It’s all so easy for Joel, moving through the water like it’s natural, like it’s simple, and all Ellie can do is watch. It’s cruel- unkind, to make her see him doing this and then make her try it just to watch her fail. Will they laugh about it later? Will Tommy, Tess and Joel talk about how incompetent she is? Maybe they’ll exchange stories about her most embarrassing moments. She’s pretty sure there was a WatchMojo compilation of that at some point, which is both hilarious and debilitating. 

She takes a couple of steps backwards, insecurity scraping the insides of her ribcage and leaving burning humiliation behind. Joel sees. “Wrong way. Come on.” 

“I’m gonna go inside.” She says. 

“Ellie-”

“I gotta pee. Or something. So.” Ellie begins moving towards the shallower, warmer water, but Joel is faster. She hears the water moving around him as he reaches her side, holding her arm like he did before and stopping Ellie in her tracks. She doesn’t look at him. The physical touch is a little overwhelming- not necessarily bad, but she wants to tear herself away and stay like this for hours all at once.  “Let go, Joel.”
“Kid.” Joel urges. Ellie ignores him and tries not to think about the burning of his skin on hers. His hands are always warm. Ellie wishes it hurt in a real way, so she could pull away and it would be okay. Reasonable. She always seems to be right on the edge of having her actions or wants be justified, constantly on the brink of madness but never quite close enough that it’s not her fault if she lets it happen. “ Look at me. C’mon.”

Reluctantly, Ellie meets his eyes. Impossibly dark, surprisingly gentle. “What?” She snaps.

Joel considers her. “Why would-” He shakes his head, just barely, and changes course, “Don’t stop now. The next part ain’t hard, just looks that way.” 

“Not hard for you .” Ellie forces out. There it is, the same flicker of something that she can’t read, before Joel frowns. She frowns right back. 

“Look,” He sighs, “I’ll do it with you. Slow, alright?”

Maybe Ellie should push back- she wants to. She wants to turn around and stomp back up to the room she’s sleeping in, call Joel something terrible and regret it for a few days before they ease back into this weird liminal space of Ellie caring and Joel doing things that make her wonder if he ever does. But she’s so tired of all that shit.

“...Okay.” She agrees. 

It’s several more minutes before Ellie’s properly able to carry herself through the water without touching the bottom, but when she can feel herself moving, floating, flying, it’s pretty hard not to smile like a complete weirdo. Joel stays close by.

“Joel!” She’s only doing a rough doggy-paddle, but it’s definitely swimming. “Joel, look at this shit! I’m like Michael Phelps.”

“Sure you are, kiddo.” 

The name, his tone, are warming. Ellie turns towards the other side of the lake so he won’t see her grin widen. “I’m unsinkable. I’m my generation’s Titanic.”

“I think-”

“Yeah, heard, whatever.” She huffs, splashing towards the shallower part of the lake as her limbs begin to tire. “This is so easy.”
“Told you so,” Joel says. Smug bastard. “But you’ll tire yourself out, flailin’ about like that.”

“I’m not ‘flailin’ about’,” Ellie mimics his accent, “I’m moving through the water with poise and grace. Olympic level shit, man.” She feels solid ground under her feet and stands up again, giving Joel a full view of her eye-roll.

“M-hm. You remember how I showed you to move your arms?” 

“Yeah. That’s what I was doing.”

“Almost. Not quite yet.” He says generously. Ellie’s pretty much forgotten how she was meant to be moving her arms, not that Joel needs to know it. “We’ll keep practicin’. You want a grilled cheese? Haven't eaten yet today.” 

Ellie gives him an expressive look, flopping backwards with a splash. “Has anyone ever wanted a grilled cheese more than I do right now?”

Joel offers her something like a half-smile. A quarter, maybe. “C’mon, then. Don’t have all day.”

Ellie paddles slowly back towards the shore, all the way until the clay floor is grazing her stomach. Her t-shirt is a mess, but Joel is already heading up the stairs and she doesn’t want to go back out into the water without him here (Fucking sue her, it’s her first day swimming anywhere at all). She stands and wrings out the heavy cotton, dripping water all the way up the stairs. 

She can hear Joel in the kitchen from the porch. “You’d better not be coming inside still soaked, Ellie. You know the rules.” He warns, like he senses her presence. Ellie throws one of Tess’ flip-flops at the kitchen window and misses completely, watching it sail into a nearby bush over the edge of the porch. She’ll have to convince Tommy to retrieve it for her.

“Oops.” She peels off her t-shirt and rubs herself down with one of the towels Joel hung over the edge of the porch railing. It’s nice, warmed by the sun and smelling of summer. Ellie wraps it around herself and heads up to her room to change. 

If she wanted to get all sentimental, she would think that something whole is beginning to take shape inside her. A warmth not marred by bitterness or jealousy or loneliness, something belonging to Ellie. Something Ellie can belong to. The inevitability of its disappearance isn’t quite so urgent when she can smell what Joel’s cooking for her, can feel her hair wetting the collar of her t-shirt and let her skin be warmed by the sun streaming in through her window. Clean clothes, the faint smell of detergent. If Ellie was the sentimental type, that’s what she would wish she had forever. But she’s not. So she goes downstairs before she can let herself become too comfortable in this home she’s stuck herself into, and tries to forget it while it’s all happening instead. 

* * *

Tommy and Tess get back while she’s eating. Joel’s sitting at the table and drinking a coffee, watching out the window as soon as he hears the car engine. Ellie can see the way that the tension seeps in and out of him in the time between hearing and seeing, reads the way he catalogues where the nearest gun is (it’s in the cupboard above the fridge- she snuck in here late last night and snooped around for all the weapons). 

“Howdy.” Ellie says, pulling her grilled cheese away from Tommy when he makes a grab for it. 

“Howdy, yourself.” He nudges the side of her head, headed towards the leftover pasta that Joel put out for the three of them. “Finally had a shower, sunshine?”
“We’ve been swimmin’.” Joel answers while Ellie has her mouth full. Tommy looks momentarily betrayed. 

“Without me?”

“Without you.” Tess pats him on the shoulder, mock-sympathetic, and grabs an apple from the bowl. “Probably had a better time for it, too. Did you see any of the eels?”
Ellie flashes Joel an alarmed look, but he shakes his head, rolling his eyes. “No eels.”

Tess laughs lowly, sitting on the other side of Ellie. Joel’s jaw tenses, if only a little. “Town’s nice, here. Very small. Few other families around, some kids Ellie’s age.”

Ellie cringes. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“She’s right,” Joel says (potentially for the first time ever). “It ain’t safe.”

“Wasn’t suggesting a party, Miller, but the point of this trip is to give Ellie a break from DC. It’s healthy for kids to have friends.” Tess says across Ellie, abruptly the frostiest she’s ever been. Joel’s frown deepens. Tommy, leaning against the counter, gives Ellie a sideways look and cocks his head for her to follow him out of the kitchen. 

“Where’re you goin’? Don’t eat that in your room, you’ll get crumbs everywhere.” Joel stops Ellie with a hand on her shoulder. She glares at him, resisting the mental equation of your room. 

“Not a problem.” She folds the rest of the sandwich in two and shoves it into her mouth, giving Joel a disgusting smile and thumbs-up. He sighs, a little infuriated, and directs her to the sink to wash up (Ellie puts her plate at the bottom and turns on the water for about three seconds before leaving it there). 

“What’s up their asses?” Ellie asks Tommy after she’s choked on her grilled cheese several times. He sits down on the couch and looks around for the TV remote, pretending not to hear her. “Tommy.”

“Hm?”
She frowns. “Come on. I know you know, motherfucker.” 

“There’s some things that just ain’t our business, Ellie-girl.” He says after a moment, clearly pretty pleased with this response. He unearths the remote and points it at the TV, hitting it against the arm of the couch when it doesn’t work. “Goddamn batteries.” 

“Tell me what’s going on with them and I’ll give you the spare batteries,” Ellie bluffs. Tommy fixes her with a suspicious look. 

“There haven’t been spare batteries in this house since I was a kid. It’s the one thing I always forget to buy in town.”

“Maybe the guy who was living here- Bill- bought some instead. ”

“...Maybe. Or maybe you’re a liar.” He says, and Ellie rolls her eyes. “Nice try, kid. Tess and Joel’s shit will remain strictly Tess and Joel’s shit.”

“That’s fucked up. I’m troubled.” Ellie sinks lower into the cushions of the couch. “You’re taking away my will to live.” 

“Aw, we don’t want that.” Tommy smirks. “Maybe some-”

“If you say swimming I’m going to do something news-worthy.”

“- Swimming might help.” Tommy continues like she hasn’t spoken, beaming. Ellie swats him with a cushion. “What, is it me? Why’re you only swimmin’ if I’m not around?”

He says it like a joke, but Ellie’s basically an aficionado at disguising actual questions with humour so she sees through it. “Don’t be weird.” She says. “It’s not a big deal, I swear I’ll go swimming with you sometime. Don’t shit yourself over it.”

“I’ll try not to,” Tommy says mildly. “We could go for a walk. Explore a bit.” 

Ellie glances over the back of the couch at the kitchen door. She can still hear the low hum of Joel and Tess arguing, probably the first full conversation she’s seen them have since arriving. “Won’t Joel be mad?”
Tommy gives her a conspiratorial wink. “He’ll be fine. I’ll text him, and he’s tracking me through my phone. Plus- heaps of Secret Service guys posted around the area. Safe as can be.”

“Famous last words.” Ellie replies.

* * *

Despite being much more chilled-out than his older brother, Tommy still insists on Ellie reapplying sunscreen and putting on her converses before they leave. He appreciates the beads on the laces, which feels strange in a not-terrible way for the first time. In some ways, Tommy can kind of remind Ellie of Riley, even if she’s not sure exactly how. 

“If Joel does kill me, it’s your fault.” Ellie tells Tommy in a whisper as they head down the porch stairs. He’s wearing his cowboy hat again. “And I already have about two hundred ways of getting revenge.”

Tommy gives her a dubious look, lifting up a low branch for Ellie to step past. “Ladies first.”

“Ha.”

The woods- if you can even call them that- aren’t dense, and they’re walking for upwards of five minutes before Ellie completely loses sight of the house. Tommy’s pretending to know shit about the trees and the lake and she’s playing along, remarkably unbothered by any of the usual stuff her brain likes to bring to the front of her thoughts and instead enjoying the sun. Plus, Ellie’s ability to keep a running commentary is on-par with his, so it’s rarely boring. 

“This right here?” Tommy leans against a tree. “Boxwood. Some are older than three thousand years, ‘round here. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

“Okay, David Attenborough.” Ellie pushes his shoulder. “You’re so full of shit.”

“How do you know?”

“Dinosaurs ‘roamed the earth’ in the Mesozoic era, motherfucker. Way before three thousand years ago.” Ellie walks a little way in front, picking at the bark on one of the trees. 

Silently, she claims it as hers. It’s weird and sappy and a little coloniser-ish, but she also wants a part of this place be hers, the way the house is Tommy and Joel’s, and the porch belongs to whoever Sarah is, and the hammock strung up on it belongs to Tess- apparently she put it up when she came here ages ago. So there can be a tree for Ellie, out here where nobody will see it. She traces an ‘E’ into the bark with her fingertip and pretends it’s permanent.

“Cringe. Netflix Original levels of cringe.” She quietly reprimands herself. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Tommy tilts his head. “Thought I might’ve missed another dinosaur fact from that big brain of yours.” Ellie acts like she’s not pleased at the compliment and kicks a couple of twigs in his direction. “Well?”

“Well, what?”
“Either give me a damn good fact or a terrible pun. I’m havin’ withdrawals.” Tommy says, steering them both a little closer to the edge of the lake. “I don’t know if I can survive an entire day without ‘em.”

“You’ve survived whole weeks without them,” Ellie reminds him. 

“Hardest weeks of my life.” 

She smiles, just a little. “Whatever. Did you know that a newborn baby has a bigger brain than most adult dinosaurs?”

“I did not. Fuckers were dumb, huh.”

“Fuckers were dumb.” Ellie agrees. “Like Joel. So are birds, and they’re mostly descended from theropods- even though theropods didn’t really have wings. They came later. They also laid eggs, some the size of basketballs.”

“Shit.” Tommy says. “How is it you know all this? Joel said he was surprised at how much you knew, but I’ve never seen you readin’ much.”

Joel said that? Ellie wants to ask, but that’s probably the least nonchalant and cool option. “I used to read a lot when I was younger. Ri- uh, my friend used to steal books from the local library for me.”

“You couldn’t have borrowed them?” Tommy raises his eyebrows, kindly brushing past the slip-up.

“Didn’t have a card. Didn’t have an email or phone number to put with the card, if I wanted one.” Ellie says flippantly. “‘Sides, I wanted to keep the books. So, theft.”

“That’s fair. I- Ellie, get down’ .” Tommy stills suddenly, an arm across Ellie and his hand on a hidden gun at his hip. Ellie hadn’t seen him pick it up. She freezes in place and lets Tommy push her to bob down at his side while he scans the trees. When he speaks, it’s in a very different voice from the one he usually speaks in. “Come out with your hands on your head. Now. ”

She’s expecting another Secret Service Agent, maybe one who didn’t get the memo about keeping a distance from the two of them, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a tall boy a few years older than she is, with black hair down to the nape of his neck and matching orange board shorts and open button-up. He walks slowly out from behind a tree with his hands on his head, eyes wide. Ellie watches him and feels her pulse quicken below her jaw- she doesn’t actually think this guy is going to kill her or something, but it’s not like it’s impossible. And Tommy’s treating him as a threat, so maybe that’s what he is. The fact that he looks terrified is somewhat comforting.

“Shit. Shit , are you gonna kill me?” He says. Tommy keeps his expression hard. 

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s public land, dude!” The boy says. “I’m allowed.”

“Tell me what you were doing, then.”

“Walking. Also allowed.” He shrugs. Ellie has to give him props for somewhat keeping his cool while at gunpoint. “I’m just headed to the beach. For swimming.” He stares at them both for a second, eyes darting to Ellie where she’s squatting next to Tommy. “If you’re kidnapping her, that’s not a good idea. There’s all these weird security guys in the parking lot about a mile back, checking everyone’s bags and stuff. Wait, maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. Shit. Are you kidnapping her? I won’t tell anyone if you don’t kill me, I swear.” 

“Dude!” Ellie frowns. The boy offers her a vaguely apologetic look.

“I’m not kidnapping her.” Tommy says, still firm but a little less cold. “Or you.”

“Great, ‘cos that hat would definitely not work if you planned on keeping a low profile. If that’s what you were going for.” The boy says. “Right?”

Ellie realises he’s talking to her a second later, and hastily nods. “Right.” 

Tommy lowers his gun, glancing at Ellie and jerking his head for her to stand up. She does so. “The security in the parking lot told you to head to the main beach. Why’d you come here?”

The boy looks a little sheepish. “Uh… privacy. My girlfriend and I wanted to lie somewhere away from the tourists.” 

“And you thought it was worth goin’ against what the Secret Service tells you to do?”

“I didn’t know that’s who they were!” His cheeks colour slightly. “Look, I’ll head back to the parking lot. My bad. Can we leave it at that?”
“No.” Tommy says. Ellie looks at him confusedly. “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”
“What?” The two of them say at once. Tommy, for the first time, looks a little amused, in a sadistic sort of way. 

“Go on. What’s your name?”

The boy stammers for a second, lowering his hands from his head. “I- uh, Jesse.” 

“Well, it is a mighty pleasure to meet you, Jesse. You live ‘round here, right?” Tommy asks, suddenly jovial. Ellie’s starting to wonder if he’s gone insane. The boy seems to be having similar thoughts.

Jesse nods reluctantly. “...Yeah.”

Tommy grins. “I spoke to your mother in town this mornin’. Nice lady. She runs the convenience store?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She told me ‘bout you, said you were a junior next year. You go to high school ‘round here?.”

“Yes, sir.” 

“Tommy. What are you doing?” Ellie hisses, but he brushes her aside. 

“You go on and swim down here with your girlfriend. Sorry ‘bout the gun, have to be cautious.” Tommy smiles widely. “Might see you later on.”

“That sounds like a fucking death threat,” Ellie tells him, then turns to the boy. Embarrassment pricks at her cheeks. “He’s not gonna kill you.”

Jesse nods, looking unconvinced. “Thanks, I guess. Uh, catch you guys later.” He all but sprints in the direction of the lake, leaving Ellie to consider the strength of her case for first-degree manslaughter right now. 

“What the fuck was that?” 

Tommy's brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“You just held him at gunpoint!”

“That was before I knew he wasn’t a threat, Ellie. You know how it is.”

“‘I know how it is’? Yeah, I know you just looked fucking insane!”

“Ellie-”

“I’m going back to the house. That was so not cool.” Ellie turns around and huffs, beginning to walk. Tommy follows. “Why did you make him introduce himself, too?”

“Thought it might be nice for you to have a friend.”

“The gun thing probably put a stop to that, motherfucker. Jesus .” She keeps walking, enjoying the crunch of her shoes on the leaves and twigs littering the ground. Ellie’s not mad, exactly, but being associated with someone who goes from effectively threatening a person’s life to asking about their plans for high school is definitely not getting her anything close to a cool reputation with the locals. 

“I embarrassed you?” Tommy doesn’t try very hard to keep the chuckle out of his voice.

“You threatened someone’s life!”
Now he’s laughing. “I embarrassed you, Ellie-girl. What, did you think he was cute or somethin’?” 

“ No.” Ellie says, which is the truth. Nothing about Jesse was appealing in that way, but to be honest- she would’ve preferred not completely butchering her first chance at talking to someone her age in months, regardless of whether they were attractive or not. “And I don’t want you to say anything about that ever again. Offensive .”

“Okay, okay!” Tommy puts his hands up in a ‘don’t-shoot’ gesture, which is ironic considering that he’s the one apparently pointing his gun at whoever dares to walk onto public property not strictly approved by the Secret Service. “No need to get all hot n’ bothered about it.”

Ellie walks for a while longer, but then Tommy starts whistling and that’s just a little too much fucking juxtaposition from the gun thing. “You’re not doing a very good job at being forgiven.” 

“Oh yeah?”
“M-hm. I’m probably gonna ask Joel to send you back to DC now.” She narrowly avoids being thwacked in the face by a tree and continues on her way. Surely Tess or Joel will be sympathetic to this, even if technically Tommy was just doing his job. Whatever . 

“I’m hurt.” Tommy puts a hand to his heart and quickly moves Ellie out of the way of another tree when she turns around to flip him off. “What, I embarrass you once and you hate me forever, darlin’?”

“Yes.”

“That feels mighty unfair, to me.”

“Sucks. It’s gonna take a lot of fucking popsicles to make up for it.”

“Ellie.” She stops, turning and crossing her arms.

“What?”

“...I’m sorry for pointin’ my gun at him.” Tommy says openly. Ellie has to fight the urge to hit him across the face. She’s not even actually angry about the fucking Jesse incident, but then Tommy has to go and be all earnest about it. At least Joel understands that he’s not meant to try to be all sappy when she’s in this mood. Tommy’s just so goddamn sincere.

“It’s fine.” 

“If it’s uncomfortable for you it ain’t fine by me, El. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Tommy, it’s not a whole fucking thing.” Ellie huffs. “I’m over it already.”

He looks slightly taken aback, which is strange because Ellie’s never really given any indication that she’s down to have a deep chat. Pretty much the opposite, actually. 

“If you say so. You got it.”

“Yep.” Ellie twists her hands together and stares at the ground. “Cool. This the way back to the house?” 

He nods, thankfully following along with her switch of topic and pointing in the vague direction they started out from. “Lead the way.”

* * *

Joel is only a little pissed that Ellie went out without telling him, since Tommy was with her. He’s exponentially less pleased when she rants to him about the gun thing that evening on the porch, while Tommy’s watching the football and Tess is where she’s been all afternoon- her room- with a ‘migraine’. Ellie hasn’t been able to get the story out of Joel no matter how hard she tries- even pretending to cry hasn’t had much of an effect. He just said maybe she should start acting classes, so she actually had a shot at convincing him.

“-And this kid’s just like ‘what the fuck?’, and I’m like ‘what the fuck?’ because who pulls a fucking gun on a teenager , and-” 

“That could’ve been a major security risk.” Joel says, more quiet but no less firm. “Tommy had the right to be concerned after that boy didn’t abide by what the team told him to do at the parking lot. It’s not something that should’ve happened at all, I’ll talk to the people posted down there tomorrow.” 

“Jesse was harmless.” Ellie reasons, stopping pacing for a second to glance at Sarah’s name and turning back to Joel. “Seriously! Don’t look so disappointed, I know that ‘everyone’s a potential threat’, but this kid was a fucking high school sophomore. And Tommy pulled a gun on him.” She mimes a gun with her hand for emphasis. “Pew-pew. He could’ve killed him, just like that.”

“He wasn’t gonna kill him. I know you’re upset, but-”

“I’m not even that upset. I’m not.” Ellie drops down on the bench next to Joel, resting the back of her head against the window with a bump and ignoring his sigh. He probably doesn’t want to be here right now- when she said she wanted some air, he likely thought it was one of those fucking panic-attacks, not Ellie shitting all over his brother for ten minutes. “ Tommy thinks I’m upset and he tried to get all sincere and wholesome which I’m definitely not ever, ever in the mood for. It was annoying of him. And embarrassing for both of us, probably him more than me.”

“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah. And he shouldn’t have apologised for it, if he was gonna claim it was the right thing to do. Feels fucking fake.”

“He was doin’ his job, Ellie.”

She groans. “I know, I’m not a fucking idiot. I just-”

Ellie stops herself, because I just wanted to be normal for once sounds like a line out of a Disney Channel show and that’s not really her brand. It’s true, in theory; in hindsight, the real issue isn’t that Tommy pointed a gun at a potential threat or that he acted all weird and embarrassing, it’s that Ellie’s someone who can be under threat that way in the first place. And that she managed to forget about it, even if only for a few minutes. She let herself get too fucking comfortable, feeling like Tommy was coming out on a walk with her as anything other than professional protection, and then that fantasy shattered and Ellie’s externalizing it all because of course she is, because she’s a massive dick. All the time, to everyone. Basically holding Joel as an emotional hostage because he’s got to be concerned that she’ll do something stupid if he’s not there to regulate her. Making Tommy feel like shit for trying to amend a situation that’s her fault in the first place. Forcing an argument between Joel and Tess about whether she should be allowed to meet other people her age for no fucking reason. Grade-A asshole behaviour.

“You just, what?” Joel’s extending an offer for her to keep going, to open up or whatever misty-eyed bullshit, but the hot frustration that had been fuelling Ellie’s rant has turned sour and cold. She stands up again and picks at her cuticles cruelly. 

“I just wish Tommy was like, slightly less nice. Motherfucker is absolutely hiding something and compensating for it. Maybe there’s a tiny horse controlling him under his hat, like in Ratatouille.”
Joel doesn’t push it. “I thought that was a rat.”

“Yeah, but Tommy’s Texan. Did you know that? Obviously.” She scrubs a hand across her face. “The horse controls his southern-ness. Making him a little more insufferable every day.” Ellie makes her voice deeper, pointing at Joel. “And it’s up to you to do your job as my main security Secret Service agent-person-guy and take him down.”

Joel gives her a Look. “Right.”

“I’ll recruit Tess as well. Speaking of Tess, did you two-”
“Pass.” 

“Come on, man, give me something to work with!” Ellie kicks Joel’s knee gently, and he frowns at her like she’s committed something akin to a war crime. “Are you guys enemies now?”
“No.”’

“Are you friends?”
“We’re colleagues. Ain’t somethin’ for you to worry about.”
“I’m not worried. I’m dying of curiosity. C’mon, tell me what happened.”

Joel pointedly looks away. “If you would like to, you are allowed to meet some of the local kids to socialise tomorrow night. We’ll go into town for dinner.”

“So Tess won?” Ellie jokes. Joel doesn’t think it’s very funny. “It makes me sound like a dog when you guys talk about ‘socialising me’, you know. I’m very well-socialised already.” (And the thought of encountering Jesse after today feels a little mortifying.) “Won’t they all know who I am? Isn’t that a security risk?”

“Not as far as Tommy and Tess thought. This… ain’t an area very affiliated with your father, to keep things simple. Not many people know what you look like, even if they know your name.” Joel explains, clearly less than pleased about it all (aside from the political affiliation thing- that pretty much translates to they aren’t bigots) . It makes Ellie feel more on-edge about the situation that he’s so clearly tense. “We have people posted around town. There’s an all-age bar we can easily secure, thought we could go there. Seems popular with kids your age.”

“How would you know that? You’re probably planning your centennial by now, not like you really know what people my age are up to.” 

Joel’s tense expression turns wearied again. “Five seconds on Google. You plannin’ on insulting all the adults in the house tonight, or just Tommy and I?”

“Just you guys.” Ellie says lightly, then sobers. “How pissed do you think Tommy is?”

“Not at all. He ain’t an angry guy, Ellie.” Joel says. “You know that.”

“I guess,” She says doubtfully. 

Joel leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “If you don’t want to go into town tomorrow, we don’t have to. You can stay here- keep practicin’ your swimmin’. If you wanted, that is.” 

Ellie considers it, then shakes her head. “It wouldn’t completely suck to get out of here for an evening. Are you coming?” She doesn’t mean for it to sound so hopeful. She doesn’t actually care that much.

“I am, indeed.”

“‘I am, indeed’. Such a cowboy .” Ellie sits back down beside Joel. The sunset tonight is all pale blues and stark orange clouds, like parts of the sky are on fire. She breathes in the cooling air and waits for the lake to darken, waits for Joel to leave her out here alone. It’s a long time before he does. Longer than Ellie thought it would be- secretly, privately, terribly, not as long as she’d hoped. 

Chapter Text

According to the three most irritating presences in Ellie’s current life, sitting in a booth and watching a group of teenagers talk to each other does not constitute socialisation. She disagrees, mostly because one of the sheer volume that their conversation has reached- she feels like she (as well as half the fucking bar) are very much included.

“It’s not as if they’re gonna say no if you ask to sit with them,” Tommy says. He clearly hasn’t been to a high school in about forty years, but telling him that is unlikely to work in Ellie’s favour. “Go on.”

“I don’t need a life coach.” She says flatly. Joel and Tess’ eyebrows shoot up, and Ellie flips them off. “Wow. Fuck you both, too. I don’t!”
They’re sitting next to each other in the booth- unusual, but Ellie’s pretty sure it’s because they don’t want to be forced to look each other in the eye. Still no dice on her detective work. 

“Tattoo girl’s been looking over her shoulder at you for about ten minutes now.” Tess nods in the direction of the group with a knowing look, even though Ellie’s pretty sure she knows fuck-all. “She clearly wants you to come over.”

Ellie knows who Tess is talking about. The girl in question is taller than everyone except Jesse (who Ellie is currently pretending is a total stranger), with short, soft hair cut in a fringe across her forehead. She’s got a tattoo of a snake on one arm and nails painted as black as the eyeliner she’s wearing. Ellie noticed her as soon as they walked in- not in a weird way, though. (Maybe in a weird way). She’s the only one whose voice they haven’t been able to pick out, which makes her enormously more interesting than any of her friends and has warranted Joel and Tommy calling her the ‘shy one’ since they began projecting their (absolutely false) assumptions about Ellie’s alleged future bridesmaids to her. Tommy’s advertising the group with a vigour suggesting that he is attempting to traffic them to Ellie. Her rebuttals that this is definitely not cool have not been met with much understanding.

“So? I don’t live for other people. Let me do what I need to do. Protect my peace.” Ellie says. Some of Frank’s more generic lines, which Joel is clearly aware of from the look he gives her. She fears a ‘we need to have a talk’ speech is imminent, unfortunately confirmed when both Tommy and Tess suddenly decide that it’s time for beers and slide out of the booth. 

“What’s up with you?” Joel asks evenly. Ellie glares at the ring of water that Tommy’s glass left behind and shrugs.

“Nothing. I love feeling like I’m a social experiment orchestrated by a team of sixty-somethings.” She emphasises the incorrect age to annoy Joel, huffing when this seems unsuccessful. His face remains impassive. “How weird do you think I can act before Tommy lets me leave?”
“You want to leave?”
She scowls irritably. “...I didn’t say that.” 

“Tommy’s not going to let up until you talk to them. Doesn’t have to be for long.” Joel says, respectfully refraining from looking too smug at this admission. Despite his less-than cheerful mood since the argument with Tess yesterday, Ellie’s been very glad to have someone matching her energy here tonight, since Tess and Tommy are suddenly all buddy-buddy. And for once, Joel’s not grumpy with her. If she asks him to take her back to the house now, he probably wouldn’t even wait for the others before he did it. He might even throw in a well-intended speech about how Ellie doesn’t need people her own age to be okay.

But it’s not that she doesn’t want friends- annoyingly, she kinda does. She’s spent entire years watching all the other teenagers- even Riley, usually- somehow find it easy to slip into conversations with one another, funny and cool and charming in a way Ellie hasn’t really figured out yet. Of course she fucking cared that she wasn’t popular, she’s not insane. But there’s a difference between wanting something and being willing to risk the humiliation of other people seeing that want; Ellie’s spent the majority of her life desperate for things that she can’t have, and she’s familiar enough with rejection from people her age that she’s not very keen on repeating the experience. The group across the bar might as well be in fucking Sweden, based on how likely Ellie is to approach them.

Besides, what does she stand to gain from talking to them? She’s leaving in a few days anyway. Logically, it doesn’t make sense, and Joel can’t argue with the facts. She tells him as much.

“It’s likely we’ll be comin’ back here, next time David’s around.” So, it turns out he can absolutely argue with the facts, which is horrible of him. “It might be good for you to make some friends. Frank thinks so.”

“Or they might all be really weird and recruit me into a cult, or something. You never know about these small towns.” Ellie says wisely. “And Frank doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“He’s a licensed psychologist.”

“Not licensed by me .” She huffs. “The only reason I agreed to come here is because I thought maybe I could have a beer, but turns out ‘all-ages bar’ doesn’t mean ‘all-ages alcohol’.”

“What a surprise.” 

“Uh-huh. It’s fucked up, man, it’s false advertising.”

Joel is not in a playing-along kind of mood. “Right.”

Ellie deflates further, slumping down so that only her upper back rests against the side of their booth. “This sucks. It’s not even your job to do this, you know.”

“Believe me, I do.”

“Then why are we here ?”
She hears footsteps close by and shuffles over for Tommy and Tess to come back into the booth, still looking at Joel and searching for an answer to her question. It’s not like Joel hasn’t shown her that there’s something more than professional duty to his behaviour on this trip, but Ellie doesn’t trust her own perception of it. W Why can’t he just tell her they’re here because he wants her to have friends, not just because Frank thinks so? As painfully sappy or disappointing those conversations might turn out to be, Ellie’s growing increasingly infuriated by the liminal space she finds him existing in. She’s a job, but she’s also someone he’s teaching to swim and checking in on most evenings. She’s a ‘little shit’, but she’s also ‘kiddo’ when he’s in a not-terrible mood. Her care is a duty to fulfil that Joel clearly resents sometimes, but then he turns around and tells her she’ll be alright in a weird, soft tone that she wishes she could hear again and wishes she’d never heard at all. It’s all fucked. 

“Hi.” Says a voice that belongs to someone who is distinctly not either Tess or Tommy. Ellie turns and freezes- it’s the shortest girl from the group, the one without tattoos. She smiles, and Ellie stares. “Jesse said he met you yesterday. You’re staying in the old guy’s house, right?”

Ellie glances at Joel. “Him?” He is unappreciative of the label, it turns out, because he slides the rest of the (slightly soggy) fries over to his side of the table and glares at Ellie.
The girl shakes her head, and a couple of dark strands of hair come loose from behind her ears. She tucks them away again and laughs as she says, “No, the guy with like, murder in his eyes.” (Ellie thinks that’s also something that could apply to Joel once you’ve made him listen to enough puns, but she doesn’t say so). “Anyway- we were just wondering if you wanted to come say hi. If that’s cool with your dad.” 

It takes Ellie a second to realise that she’s talking about Joel, in which time he’s already said, “Not her dad.” 

She ignores anything but the truth of that statement and points at him. “What he said.”

The girl shrugs, unfazed. “My bad, I just assumed. I’m Dina.” 

“Ellie. That’s Joel.” She says stiffly. Dina beams. Be any more full-on, jesus.

“...So? Would you want to come over?” She says after a moment. 

Ellie considers it, glancing at the group of teenagers. They’re being incredibly unsubtle about staring at her. The tattoo girl looks Ellie up and down and twists one of the silver rings she’s wearing. “Fine,” Ellie says. “Joel, I’m going over there with Dina.”

“I heard.” 

“None of you are allowed to come over and talk to us. Especially not that motherfucker you call ‘brother’.” 

He nods, rolling his eyes. “I’ll pass that on.”

Dina speaks very quickly and very loudly while Ellie slowly overheats under the stares of her three friends. There’s Jesse, who asks Ellie if Tommy still has his gun (she lies and says he doesn’t) and is Dina’s ‘latest fling’- he clearly doesn’t agree with this description, since he immediately laughs a bit too loudly and throws his arm over her shoulders. Then there’s Cat, who’s the tattoo girl and is also still by far the quietest. She greets Ellie with a look that makes something kick in her stomach, and it’s suddenly very difficult to make eye contact. Finally, there’s Adam, who’s in Cat and Jesse’s year at school and is constantly texting his girlfriend. 

Dina’s the only one who is in the same grade as Ellie- she couldn’t be more different, alarmingly perky (a word that nobody would use to describe Ellie Williams at the moment). As soon as they’re out of earshot of Joel, she whirls around and holds Ellie’s shoulders, eyes wide and serious. 

“Are they kidnapping you?”

Ellie blinks. “What?”

It’s all of five seconds before Dina starts laughing, and Jesse follows. “‘Cos of the gun thing,” He says. “And hat guy was ordering you around, and stuff. We thought maybe you were being held hostage.”
“Why would they want to hold me hostage? I’m not important, or related to anyone important. What?” Ellie says, definitely super normally and not at all too fast. “...So, do you guys live around here?” 

She already knows the answer to that question, but it’s a relief to move away from whatever the fuck she just said when Dina nods. “Yeah, we’re all from around here. Don’t usually talk to tourists, but we thought we should probably see if you were about to be the topic of a true crime doc or something.”

“Oh, ha.” Ellie says weakly.

“You know, I would never get murdered or kidnapped,” Jesse says solemnly. “I would dodge any attacks with beastly agility and perfection.” 

None of the other three react to that, so Ellie doesn’t either. She wonders how long she has to stand here before her nosy security team lets her return to her fries. Or how realistically she can fake a medical emergency so they have to let her leave. “Okay.” She says. 

Jesse nods like she should think that was the pinnacle of wisdom, and Cat rolls her eyes, speaking with soft judgement. “So weird, dude.”

“It’s not weird if it’s a fact-”

“It’s objectively a weird thing to say. Do you want her to think we’re part of a cult, or something? That you’re into some kind of crazy pseudo-animalistic ritual?” Cat crosses her arms. Ellie stares, trying to think of something cool to say to make Cat think she’s also the kind of person who will just drop ‘pseudo-animalistic’ into a conversation. Not literally, obviously, but something similar. Ellie is unsure whether it’s her own brain or the air in this bar that’s suddenly making her feel unbelievably dumb. Cat looks her way and is suddenly smiling, soothing the features that had been made slighter harsher by her dark eye makeup. “Jesse doesn’t understand how to have a normal conversation with someone, you just have to ignore it. Where are you from?”
“Maryland.” Ellie lies, kind of. She lived in a foster home in Baltimore once. And what really constitutes being ‘from’ somewhere anyway? She’s seen Hairspray, she’s essentially a Baltimore native. 

Cat tilts her head. “Nice.” 

“Where in Maryland?” Dina asks, unnervingly cheerful. 

“Baltimore.” Call me John Travolta in drag, she wants to say. It’s the kind of thing that Joel wouldn’t get, which would be funny to bully him for. Ellie checks over her shoulder and finds the three adults suddenly far too engrossed in their drinks- beer for Tess and Tommy, and water for Joel. She narrows her eyes at them and turns back to find Dina’s eyes on her.

“Which part?”

Ellie frowns. “You zeroing in on my fucking address?”

For the first time, Dina’s smile falters, but she shakes out her shoulders and laughs it off within seconds. “Yeah, I’m definitely stalking you, Ellie.” She says Ellie’s name like it’s funny. Ellie scowls. 

“Whatever.” 

Jesse’s eyes dart between the two girls, and he squeezes Dina a little closer, looking awkward. “O-kay, cool, great, nice, good.” He lists adjectives like a thesaurus. “Are you a freshman like Dina, or…?”
“Last year.” Ellie replies, trying not to get caught up in the feeling of being judged. “I do online school.”

“I always wanted to do that,” Cat says, “But the reception’s so bad around here. I would’ve probably dropped out or something- our school’s kinda shit.” 

Now Dina’s looking personally offended. “No it isn’t.”

Cat’s dark eyes flick upwards, just barely. “Says the cheerleader.” 

“I’m not a cheerleader anymore!” Dina’s thick eyebrows pinch together, and she tightens her ponytail in one of the most stereotypically cheerleader-ish mannerisms Ellie can imagine. “That was just last year. I was experimenting, and I’m completely over that phase of my life.”

“Did you know that Dina can do a back handspring?” Jesse asks helpfully. Dina elbows him. “What? It’s cool! Sorry for being proud of my girlfriend!”

Cat looks at Ellie, distracting her from whatever Dina replies. “They’re so in love.” She says dryly, then glances down at Ellie’s shirt, which is a picture of Judge Judy against an explosion. Ellie technically wore it as a way to work against the stupid socialise-the-non-consenting-teenager plan, but it’s a very easy decision to regret when Cat is seeing it. “Amazing t-shirt.”

Ellie’s ears get really warm. “Thanks, it was my grandma’s.” She blurts, then adds something else to the ever-growing list of regrets that lives in her brain. Cat laughs and tucks her hair behind both ears, though, which makes up for it. She has a pretty laugh. 

God, are you going to be this awful forever? ‘She has a pretty laugh’- fuck off and die, Ellie thinks, colouring. 

“Your grandma has good taste.”

“Thanks. I like-” Ellie’s mouth stops working, and she points to her earlobe. “Holes.” 

She means Cat’s piercings, four on each ear and studded with silver. It’s cool, which is apparently the fucking opposite to what kind of behaviour Ellie’s capable of right now. 

“Good movie, sure.” 

“I meant-“

“I got it, it’s okay.” Cat laughs, touching her earrings and shifting onto the hip closest to Ellie. “...Thanks. You don’t have any piercings?” 

“All my toes, actually. Yeah. Pretty painful stuff.” Ellie nods, and Cat shoves her shoulder gently. Adam looks up and narrows his eyes at Ellie before returning to his phone screen. 

“Liar.” Cat says softly. “How come you don’t have any?”

Riley offered to pierce Ellie’s ears once, but she chickened out. She hasn’t really seen the point since then. “I’m not allowed.” Ellie lies. “Plus, I wanted to swim this summer.” She remembers infections from girls swimming with self-pierced ears the summer after Riley did it, so Ellie’s pretty sure that’s standard. She’s unsure why she can’t just tell Cat that she never got them done. I just never wanted to doesn’t really feel acceptable.

“Fair,” Cat nods, accepting it. “My mom used to hate them, but then I got my tattoos and that was a lot worse so she forgot about my ears.”

“Nice. What’re your tattoos of?”

Before Cat can answer, Dina and Jesse abruptly finish bickering and return to the conversation with matching smiles. Ellie wonders if they’re equally fake, too. Nobody is that fucking happy. 

“Dina thinks we should go back to her house and watch something,” Jesse announces to the group. “This place is so dead. Plus, Chrissy’s bought new glasses which means the fake IDs won’t work anymore.”

The skin on Ellie’s face prickles uncomfortably, but she’s determined not to show any trace of the disappointment this exclusion elicits from her. She’s just met these people, it’s not that weird for them to go and do other things. She’s not even sure that she really likes any of them but Cat, anyway, so it doesn’t fucking matter. She hardens her expression and glances at Joel. He raises a brow at her and Ellie hates that she’s going to have to tell him that the first group of people her age that she’s spoken to in almost a year decided to leave within five minutes of meeting her. For a second, she’s tempted to confront them, to ask what was so fucking uninteresting about her that they had to get out of here so quickly. She can imagine the wide-eyed looks they’ll give each other before bursting into laughter the minute they’ve left her behind, talking amusedly about how awkward she is, how weird it is that she stuck around so long, the day-three oiliness of her hair and the horrible taste in clothing. Ellie wishes she could go back to the house by herself and burrito herself into the hammock for the next three days. 

Cat glances her way. “Ellie, what do you want to watch?”

Oh. Ellie opens and closes her mouth a few times. “Uh. Holes, probably.”

Dina, Jesse and Adam look slightly bemused while Cat nudges Ellie sideways. She’s struck by the improbability of this sudden something, close to friendship; her stomach gives a lurch. “Good movie.” Cat chimes again. 

It’s surprisingly easy, convincing Tommy, Tess and Joel to let her walk the two blocks to Dina’s house. She has to turn on the tracker on her phone and promise not to injure herself in any way, and Joel will be sitting in a car down the street to ‘keep an eye on things’, but the other teenagers don’t have to know about that. Ellie keeps wondering if they’re going to break some terrible news to her, some valid reason to give her this, but none of the adults seem more than a little weirded-out by her repeated requests to tell her if it’s an issue.

“You sure you really want to go, El-Bell?” Tommy asks at one point. She’s pretty sure Joel must’ve said something about how overbearing he was being before. She nods.

“Super sure.”

It’s the truth. When nobody else had voiced a desire for Ellie not to join them, as if that had been the plan all along, something warm spread outward through her ribcage and lingered on Ellie’s skin. It’s enough of a good feeling that she’s even started liking Dina and Jesse a bit more. They’re waiting for her by the doorway when she heads over, phone in her pocket with $20 that Tommy slipped her for no specific reason- they’re going to someone’s house, not a fucking strip club. Still, if they end up ordering food Ellie can use it to pay Dina back. It’s nice to imagine that happening; sitting down with a group of people her age and eating, talking, laughing. Ellie wishes she was properly one of them more than she’d anticipated. 

The walk to Dina’s house is short, the sky a darker blue that makes Ellie feel like she’s underwater, surrounded by the still-warm air and the smell of summer. Jesse and Adam run ahead across the middle of the empty street without any reason to do so, gravel spraying from under their sneakers. Dina, Cat and Ellie walk together behind them. Ellie’s in the middle, which absolutely isn’t a big deal. She feels so much like a teenager, though, and it’s finally in a way that doesn’t seem to be a burden. Ellie wants to be young right now, she wants to be here. It’s a relief, like something finally clicking into place, and she sort of wishes she could tell Joel. Later, she reminds herself. 

The house itself is modest but open, pale sandy-coloured walls and glass jars filled with shells. There’s an older girl sitting on a kitchen island who looks like Dina, though her hair is loose around her shoulders and she’s wearing large, square glasses. Her legs are bare- when she hops off, Ellie can see denim cut-offs seemingly hand-embroidered with flowers and leaves, the warm colours matching the orange and pink of her singlet. There are two other girls behind her; one of them is holding a smoking spliff which Ellie smells as soon as she enters the room. She pauses by the door- Joel will be mad if he smells it on her when she leaves, and she’s hoping to keep her current mood going for as long as she can without getting in trouble.

“Hey, Di.” The girl says coolly, wrapping her arms around Dina with the slow, comfortable movements of someone with weed in their system. “You didn’t stay out long.”

“The Bison was dead,” Jesse says, “Fucking sucked , man.”

Adam elaborates, back on his phone. “Chrissy got glasses, our IDs won’t work on her.”

“Ellie!” Dina turns to face Ellie and grins. “This is my sister, Talia. She’s not usually like this.”

“E-llie.” Talia sounds out the name and giggles. 

“How much has she smoked?” Dina turns to one of Talia’s friends for explanation, still looped under her sister’s arm. Jesse plucks two bananas from a bowl on the bench and begins peeling one for himself, clearly familiar with the house. 

“I sold them a third of an ounce, they’ve barely had anything. Talia just has super low tolerance,” One says- now that Ellie looks properly at her, it’s obvious that she’s a little older, further into her twenties than the other two and with a canvas bag still over one shoulder. She doesn’t look like the dealers from DC, who were mostly men and didn’t have the same summery gloss to them as this girl does. Ellie catches herself staring and looks down. What else is she selling? Just weed, or the stuff that Riley had? 

“C’mon,” Cat tugs Ellie’s arm gently. The four of them- plus Dina a moment later- traipse into a low-ceilinged room with a couch, faded bean-bags and a TV in it. Jesse flicks off the lights as his girlfriend scrolls through a series of various streaming services, chatting all the while about her sister and the shows she’s seen and the shows she wants to see. Ellie should be listening; this is all for her, but Cat’s thigh is pressed against hers where they’re sitting on the couch and she can smell the soft-sweet apple scent of the other girl’s shampoo, which is completely distracting. 

The movie is good, actually. Ellie thinks she saw it about ten years ago at some foster-home movie night, so it was blurred in her mind, but she finds herself leaning into the reactions of the others. When they laugh, she laughs too. When Cat makes comments under her breath Ellie laughs at those too- she carefully doesn’t respond with too much vigour, focused on keeping things chilled and not being annoying the way other people always say she is. 

An hour and a bit into the movie, her phone vibrates with a text from Joel and Ellie excuses herself to the bathroom with some embarrassment at interrupting it for everyone else. Cat smiles at her as she goes.

‘Just checking in.’, the message says. Ellie rolls her eyes and pretends not to smile for no reason as she types a response.

They’re all dead and ur next. 

Then,

Stop being weird, I’m fine

She can feel Joel’s disapproval in the three jumping dots that appear below her message, and she slips the phone back into her pocket just as the older girl from before turns into the hallway. “Oh, hey.” She says. She’s still got the bag over one shoulder and a tiny plastic bag in the opposite hand, shining where it catches the kitchen lights. 

“Hey,” Ellie keeps her voice casual. Controlled. “Sorry, I’m done in the bathroom.”

The woman nods without moving, cocking her head at Ellie. “You want?”

It’s a few seconds before it registers that she’s offering Ellie some of the tiny blue pills in the bag, and even longer before Ellie realises that she hasn’t responded with the fuck off, I’m fourteen, sentence that Joel would want her to, but has asked what they are instead. “Looks like Viagra,” She’s said. Stupid .

“It’s molly.” The woman’s lips pull sideways in something like a smile. “And I’m Mona. Ellie, right?”

“Yeah.” Ellie stares at her, then at the pills. “What do they do?” She sounds like fucking amateur hour. She knows what drugs do, she’s not even sure why she’s asking. 

“Make you feel better about things. Fixes shit up.” 

Ellie swallows hard, trying to digest the anger that flares up. “Those don’t fix anything. They’re pills- they’re not even medicine.”

“Have you tried them, then?” Mona asks, without any accusation in her voice. Ellie hesitates, then shakes her head once.

“I- No, but my best friend did. All they do is fuck things up for everyone.”

“Things are always fucked up for everyone, honey.” Her brow furrows, a few tiny brown freckles disappearing into the creases created. “You have such a sad face.”

“That’s fucked up to say to a teenager. You’re giving me issues.” She jokes weakly. 

“Did your friend like this kinda stuff?”

Ellie won’t say the name of what Riley ‘liked’, liked enough to inject into her fucking blood , so she shrugs. “Not specifically.” She shouldn’t be here, talking to this woman. If Ellie was relieved to escape anything from before the White House, it was this shit. Granted, the people from before were… different. Colder, somehow. Mona is sweeter in the way everything is here, entirely removed from whatever’s waiting for her in that big white prison in DC. 

Mona steps closer and touches her cheek gently like she’s seeing Ellie cry instead of frown. The space between her eyebrows dimples. “What?” Ellie says. 

“You’re so small.” This close, she can see red rimming Mona’s eyes. She’s high. It makes sense; not many drug dealers would offer out their shit for free if they were in their right mind. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Ugh!” Mona removes her hand from Ellie’s face and slaps it against her forehead in an exaggerated show of disgust. She leans sideways against the hallway’s wall. “ Fourteen. That was my least favourite age, Ellie.”

“Tell me about it.” Ellie widens her eyes in emphasis. “How old are you ?”
“Twenty-four. We’re parallel.” Mona says. “Ten years between us. Why’re you sad, Ellie?” She keeps saying her name like that, like it’s so important. 

“I’m not sad.”

Mona shakes her head, painfully gentle. “Look,” She digs around in her canvas bag and pulls out a larger plastic bag that’s otherwise identical to the one between her manicured fingers, holding about double the amount of blue pills. “These are new. Fresh this week.”

Ellie doesn’t know what it is that makes a pill ‘fresh’. She doesn’t know why Mona is telling her this. “Oh, nice.”

“Do you want some?”

“Did you not hear what I-”
“It’s a gift. You don’t have to have any if you don’t want it, honey, but being a teenage girl is a fucking trip.”

Ellie can’t argue with that. 

“I know you’re mature enough to be responsible with this stuff, okay?” Mona says, with a look like she really does care if Ellie’s responsible with the drugs she’s giving her. Somehow, it rings true- Ellie saw Riley, she’s not going to make the same fucking stupid mistakes. And she’s never heard of people getting hooked on ecstasy the same way Riley was hooked on her shit, only ever using it out of want rather than need. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“You don’t know me- I can’t- ?” Ellie stares at the bag of pills. There can’t be more than ten in there. “You’ve never met me before right now, man. Why would you give this stuff away?”

Mona shrugs loosely. “I’m going back to college,” She says, a sudden clarity in her voice. “It was fun over summer, but… I’m bored of this, to be honest. I’m never gonna sell everything, I haven't even had time to try most of it myself.”
“I hope you’re not going into sales after this.” Ellie replies. “Kinda a shit pitch.”

Mona laughs quietly. “If you don’t want it, I can-”
“No.” Ellie blurts. She breathes past the scent of vomit that seems to be creeping around the corners of the hallway and snatches the plastic bag from Mona. “Whatever. Thanks.”

Give it back. Give it back. Give it back. 

It would be so easy. Pass the bag back, forget the whole fucking thing, dismiss it as a moment of total stupidity that Joel will never, ever know about. Ellie likes to think she’s relatively smart; the idea that drugs are potentially not great is a preschool-level revelation. Not to mention her personal experience, as if it doesn’t feel like it permeates just about every second of her being already. Ellie knows, she’s seen this stuff first-hand.

And yet. Fucking - fucking- and yet, this isn’t what got Riley. This stuff is a drop in the ocean of what Riley did, that’s obvious as well. Ellie searches for familiar hollows in Mona’s cheeks, bruises on the insides of her elbows, and cannot find them. Mona isn’t telling her that this will be the ‘everything’ Riley had craved so terribly, just a bit of something to ease the hardest bits of life. And fuck, if the hardest bits of Ellie’s life aren’t unbearable. She can’t even think of what’s waiting for her in DC without her mind disappearing to places it hasn’t gone in a long time, places she only properly realised existed in the terrible days after Riley died. Ellie’s not someone who gets scared by stupid things, but some days it feels like she can’t become anything but worse from here, and that nothing she does will stop it. If she can pick herself up as she begins to drop, just sporadically… it may be easier to deal with the world. She wouldn’t feel so far away from this place, this feeling, this night. 

Ellie puts the bag in her pocket and goes back to sit beside Cat.

Chapter Text

Ellie had thought it would be harder to keep a secret from Joel than this. Maybe it should be- she considers that the weight she’d anticipated from the pills now shoved into the lining of her bag doesn’t feel very heavy at all, and that might be an issue on the moral front. Then again, Ellie’s also pretty sure she’s having a better time because of it. She’s really doing Joel a favour, not telling him. The guy’s a worrier. 

Ellie fends off Tommy’s questions about her ‘new best friends’ the next morning with less ease. She’d hoped he and Tess would have old-people hangovers from the minimal amount of beers they drank last night, but he emerges from his room just as she’s making her toast (somehow Joel has converted her to a full on breakfast-eater on this trip) with a broad, knowing smile. 

“Mornin’, honey-girl.” He says. Ellie wrinkles her nose at the name and presses down the toaster button again. It’s old and faulty; it always takes about four tries to get the bread even slightly warmer, or one try to burn it to a crisp. “Have fun last night?”
“Yeah, me and your mom really connected.” Ellie replies flatly, dodging his attempt to tug her ponytail and landing a swift kick to Tommy’s shins. “She’s a nice woman. Mature.”

“For real, though.” He leans against the bench beside her and fills the coffee machine with water. All three adults are totally addicted, Ellie’s noticed, though Tommy perhaps the least. “How was it? Were they nice to you?”
Ellie frowns judgmentally. “No, they were fucking assholes, which is why I stayed four hours.”

She’d climbed into the car beside Joel expecting a lecture about some implied-but-not-stated curfew last night, having missed several calls, but he’d been oddly un-pissed-off about it. Ellie had waited the entire drive back to the house for him to interrogate her about any potential drugs or alcohol, give her a reason to lie, but Joel had let her do most of the talking. He’d even seemed pleased for her- well, as pleased as he could seem- when she mentioned that Dina, Jesse and Cat had given her their numbers before she left (Adam had remained distinctly silent), and promised that he would work out a way for Ellie to contact them from DC. She sort of hopes he doesn’t follow through, otherwise she’d be obligated to properly admit how much it means to her that he’d do that.

“Sounds like fun. Jesse’s cute, ain’t he?” Tommy grins. Ellie pretends to throw up. “I’m just sayin’!”

“Don’t ‘just say’, motherfucker!” Ellie’s toast pops out, charred beyond redemption. She grabs a bitter-knife and starts scraping away the blackness covering it, something to do to avoid Tommy’s eyes. “You need to drop your obsession with that guy. Acting like a fucking weirdo for no reason.”
Before Tommy can answer, Tess and Joel walk into the kitchen looking immensely awkward so close together. Ellie watches them separate as soon as they’re through the door, Joel heading towards the coffee machine and Tommy while Tess rifles through the fridge and nods good morning to the two people she tolerates.

“Your toast is burnt, Ellie.” She remarks unhelpfully. “Just make some more, don’t eat that.”

“Food waste is no joke.” Ellie retorts matter-of-factly. 

Joel, to her surprise and irritation, does not back her up. “That ain’t even food anymore, no need to worry about any ‘waste’. You’ve already cooked all the nutrients out of it, kiddo.”

Ellie valiantly does not give in to the ‘kiddo’, putting the knife down and crossing her arms. “What is it, national ‘attack a teenager’ day? Let me eat my toast in peace!”
Truth be told, the more burnt crumbs she scrapes off, the less hope she has of ever finding something resembling bread, but Ellie’s not about to tell these smug fuckers that. She would literally rather eat charcoal- that’s the plan, anyway. It’s about the principle of the thing.

Joel drinks some coffee and stares. “Take a bite, then.”

“What happened to the nice, chilled Joel from last night, huh? I’m gonna write a petition to bring him back. You suck right now..” Ellie says grumpily, making no move to do as he says. “I’m gonna eat this outside. Can a person get some fucking peace and quiet around here?”

Joel lifts an eyebrow like watch it , but Tommy reaches across his brother before he can speak and plucks Ellie’s previously-toast from her plate, tossing it out the window and into a bush without so much as blinking. Her mouth drops open. 

“What the fuck, man?”

Tommy shrugs, unfazed, and drinks more coffee. “Guess my hand must’a slipped, sweetheart. Sorry.”
“ Asshole .” Ellie says emphatically. When she glances at Tess for emotional support, the woman turns back to face the fridge, very obviously laughing at her. “Asshole s , all of you. God . Guess I’ll chew a fucking leaf for breakfast.”

“El-”
She holds up a hand as she crosses the kitchen, ignoring Tommy’s half-laughing plea. “Nope! Get absolutely shat on, Tommy, I’m gonna put lake mud in your bed.”

It’s Tess that comes out after a few minutes, leaning against the porch railing and watching Ellie swing murderously on the hammock with raised eyebrows. 

“Joel’s saying you need to eat.”

“Ellie’s saying Joel should suck a dick, maybe.” Ellie glares. “The Millers really know how to ruin a good mood. It’s like a hereditary disease, or something.”

“They definitely do,” Tess’ voice is slightly more wistful than Ellie expected. She puts her bare feet down on the porch and stares at Tess, stilling. If there was ever time to be direct…

“What’s going on between you and Joel?”
“...Nothing for you to worry about, kid.”

Ellie scowls. “Don’t you start that patronising shit as well. C’mon , Tess, there’s obviously some shit between you. I’m told I bring people together, you know. Maybe I can help.” At Tess’ expression, she huffs and scuffs her left foot against the wooden floor. “Even if I can’t, you have to tell me. It’s fucked up to keep this shit from me just because I’m younger.” 

“It’s not because you’re younger, kid, it’s-”
“Does Tommy know?” Ellie stares at Tess, and she can see the answer in her face. There’s the lingering knowledge that Tommy knowing doesn’t entitle her to anything; Ellie’s not one of them, she knows that. Tess doesn’t have to tell her anything about her personal life because she’s only here in a professional capacity.

There’s something cruel about it all, though. For the thousandth time, Ellie’s completely fucking unable to be one of them in regards to any group- certainly not her father’s family (though that feels less painful), but also never one of Jesse and Cat’s group, or the older kids who Riley used to hang out with, or Tess, Tommy and Joel’s little unit. She’s always too much of herself for them, too young or loud or quiet or different or too much the daughter of the president to ever really fit somewhere. When she thinks about the pills in her bag, the hope for the relief they might provide is soured by the knowledge that it will be Ellie, Ellie alone , doing them. Even Riley had a community of addicts to belong to.

When Riley was here, in the short moments of everything when she would kiss Ellie and keep a tiny set of photo-booth pictures in the pocket of her jeans, they were part of something bigger. A community, maybe, that Ellie had envisioned herself belonging to forever. But even that is impossible now, because Ellie is Ellie Williams and she cannot show that part of herself to anyone.

…Also, Tommy just threw her breakfast out the fucking window. So. Reparations.

“I don’t have anyone to tell but you guys,” Ellie adds honestly. “I won’t say anything.”

She can see the moment that Tess’ resolve loosens, but it’s not satisfying. It’s laced with a pity that Ellie never wants Tess to feel for her, and she’s almost tempted to reject the admission that’s coming. But she’ll never know if she doesn’t find out now. “Joel and I worked together for a long time. Lived together for some of it- convenience, I guess. And we were kinda friends.” 

Ellie nods, although it nearly feels impossible to imagine a younger-looking Joel. Tess continues. 

“‘Round two years in, we’re out one night- Joel’s fresh back from looking after Tommy, after he got injured. It was just the two of us. We got drunk, things changed… shit happened.” 

Oh, shit. “You guys were together?”
“More or less. Not dating, just-”
“Gross. Got it.” Ellie wrinkles her nose, and Tess smirks. 

“You asked, kid.” She sips her coffee and shifts from one hip to the other. “Then the last job ends and we’re both out. There was- things happened back home that changed Joel, over those times before we stopped working together, it never became anything more than what it was. Didn’t let it, not for ten years.”

Ellie’s not sure if Tess means that they both didn’t let it, or just one of them. A million questions bubble to the surface; what were the jobs? What happened back home? Why did Joel change? What was he like before? 

“Skip to five more years down the line and we’re both Secret Service now, recruited from the same pool. The three of us, we were all happy to be in the same spot again. Three years later again, and Joel and I both begin working for the president’s kid, a little closer than before.” Tess takes a long pause to drink the rest of her coffee. Ellie remains silent. “We were never together , but… there were times when it was the same way it used to be, easier to fall into old habits. One of those times- the last time- was about a month ago, when we were both off duty for around two hours during a dinner with the Guslers.” 

Ellie’s stomach drops, suddenly. She’s wondered more than once where they were, that night, when she came out of the sitting room and couldn’t recognise any of the guards properly. Before Joel pulled her off Alistair. “I didn’t know you guys were off duty.”

Tess watches her steadily. “Technically, we were. The assumption was that nothing would put you in danger at a family dinner surrounded by other agents, and I would start at my usual time for the night shift.”

“Oh. Got it.” Ellie says, a little stiffly. It’s a big fucking revelation, that the reason why Joel and Tess weren’t there until later was because they were with each other. She’s not upset, just… caught off guard, maybe. Embarrassed that she hasn’t realised until now. Part of her might be just a little hurt, though she’s not sure why. They had the night off. Obviously they wouldn’t be thinking about her then, and it’s not as if they could’ve stopped her father anyway. Ellie’s just grateful to have another piece of evidence for her argument that they’re nothing more than professional presences in her life, and that’s how they like it. 

“Look, kid… we regretted it. Leaving you by yourself, it was a mistake.”

She’s not an idiot. However convinced Ellie is that Joel and Tess don’t really care about her beyond what their paycheck requires, she also knows that it’s distinctly more complicated on her end. She cares, she can tell, because it’s all so painful the way only caring is. And because of that care, there’s a sudden stab of guilt for ending whatever Joel and Tess had. She interrupted them with her stupid complicated chaos, and apparently deterred them from continuing their relationship or feelings for one another. Ellie’s not very experienced in ruining more than just her own life- she helped Riley do it, maybe, but that’s all. It’s much worse this way. Regret and guilt and frustration that she’s managed to do it completely without meaning to, the stab of grief that’s always there when she makes the same mistakes that she did with Riley again. It all fills her chest suddenly, uncomfortable and burning. Steaming concrete, the scent of bile.

“Wasn’t a mistake. There were other agents.” Ellie says flatly. Whatever she does, she can’t let them go on thinking that she’s worth ending this kind of thing over. 

 “Uh-huh. Well, the point is, neither of us wanted to risk fucking up like that again. Getting distracted. It’s for the best.”

“Maybe.” Ellie stares at one of her elbows, where the sunburned skin is beginning to peel. “Thanks for telling me, I guess. I’m gonna go swim.”

“Wait for Joel,” Tess says. For someone who’s usually aloof, casual, she looks oddly pensive. Ellie’s unsure why she let the tone shifted from conspiratorial to uncomfortable.

But she agrees reticently, waiting down by the pier and feeling like more of a burden than before. As if it wasn’t enough to unintentionally put an end to Joel and Tess’ relationship, now she’s also forcing him to come outside and watch her swim for an hour. You just don’t stop, do you? was one of the Kwongs’ favourite lines to use on Ellie, with little success. She’d thought of it as a challenge at the time. Now Ellie wonders if everyone here is as tired of herself as she is. She wishes she could get in the water and wash the feeling away.

But she’s not in the mood to get in trouble for doing it without Joel around, one of the rules he’s stated more firmly since arriving here. Despite his grumpy reassurance that Ellie’s swimming is, in fact, not a lost cause, he still doesn’t let her do it by herself, and Ellie’s aware of the difference between rules like no more Will Livingston before breakfast and don’t swim without supervision. Namely, how mad Joel will get if she breaks them, and how likely it is that he’ll make sure she feels sorry for doing so.

Ellie wonders if it’s normal to feel guiltier about breaking up Joel and Tess than it is to have illegal drugs stowed in her bag upstairs. Something to add to the long list of things she will not discuss with any of the adults in her life, she guesses. 

“Surprised you didn't bother me to come out here yourself,” Joel says, a second after she hears the creak of his footsteps on the pier. Ellie turns around and squints upwards; the sun is already high enough that it’s hard to make out Joel’s features, but imagining a frowny face suffices.

“Didn’t want to see Tommy the traitor.” She lies, getting to her feet with some of the stiffness of having woken up recently and shading her eyes with one hand. Joel replaces it by slotting her cap over her head, face as unmoving as ever when she adjusts it for herself and looks down.

“Are you wearing sunblock?” 

“...Probably.”

“Ellie.” He warns. 

“As in, ‘probably’ is what I will say in five minutes, when I’m wearing it,” She corrects sheepishly, letting him pass her the tube and rubbing some into her skin. Next is one of his precious fucking muesli bars, which he insists on Ellie eating before she’s allowed a single drop of water on her skin, and then she’s finally deemed ready to swim. Joel is unimpressed by the splash Ellie makes when she jumps off the end of the pier, clumsily paddling to a slightly shallower area and treading water there.

“Come on, Joel, water you waiting for?”
“That’s a zero out of ten.”

“That is not a zero, you fucker!” She says indignantly, then adds, “Don’t krill my vibe.”

“I’m startin’ to think I shouldn’t let you swim anymore,” Joel rolls his eyes. Ellie is far from finished. 

“You shrimp-ly must get in the water,” She adopts a flawed but hilarious British accent and enjoys his deepening glare. “It’s your porpoise in li- Shit !” 

Ellie is interrupted by the younger Miller sprinting down the pier and jumping off, red hat still firmly on his head. She’s immediately re-drenched, as is Joel, though that’s a little more funny. Tommy resurfaces and spits a stream of water at his brother. Ellie decides to forgive him for the toast incident. 

The last two full days that Ellie’s staying by the lake go far too quickly. Punctuated by long mornings spent in and out of the lake, inventive sandwich combinations for lunch (spaghetti was a surprising victory), and dinners around the table with the three adults, time slips away from her before she can remember to really stew in thoughts of Joel and Tess, or the Sarah M from the porch, or much of anything else. Despite Joel’s best efforts, Ellie does get sunburned, but he’s hardly even mad about it when he spreads aloe vera on her shoulders and face with hands that aren’t punishing the way she expects them to be. The worst she gets out of the experience is a lecture for trying to hide it under a hoodie that almost made her overheat, and Tommy says Joel isn’t mad so much as confused about why she wouldn’t just tell them. Ellie’s pretty sure Joel is in the habit of acting angry when he’s confused- maybe he’s not so much dangerous, as he is dumb with a resting bitch face. Tommy agrees. 

As is tradition, the younger Miller also purchases popsicles to aid in her healing process, and Tess cools wet towels in the fridge to drape over Ellie’s face for a few hours until the redness has faded to a soft pink. She spends the entire afternoon feeling very pampered- somehow, this is the closest she’s ever felt to actually being the spoiled president’s daughter that she probably should be. 

Their ninth day by the lake is the mildest in terms of heat, and the first time Ellie’s allowed to swim by herself (although she’s pretty sure she spots all three adults peeking out of various tinted windows as she floats peacefully through the water). Tess puts down a towel by the front door for her to dry her feet on and avoid a Joel glare, which Ellie gets anyway because she’s been gifted a kazoo by Tommy and Joel is not a fan of the beautiful melodies she produces throughout the late morning and early afternoon. It ends up mysteriously in the same bush as her toast, although Joel swears he knows nothing about it. 

Just after three in the afternoon, Joel knocks on the wall just outside Ellie’s room. 

“Hey,” He says. Ellie, who was lying like a starfish on her bed and seeing if the ceiling fan could hypnotise her, props herself up on her elbows and looks at him.

“Howdy. Are you coming up here to lecture me about something? I’m not in the right headspace for push-ups. It’s like I have spaghetti arms.”
He raises one of his eyebrows and crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “Have you done somethin’ that would warrant push-ups?”
“‘Course not, you know me.” Ellie says innocently. “I thought maybe you were raring to go after the kazoo incident, is all. Tommy said that was the closest he’s ever seen you to bursting a blood vessel.”

Joel acts like she’s not funny, looking down for a second before he fixes her with a fake-irritated look. “Tommy was right. But that ain’t what I came to talk about. It’s nice weather- not too hot.”

“Yeah, where’s that fucking ‘global warming’ now?” Ellie says. Her father’s favourite joke. He says it every time it’s not boiling hot, and it has never once been less than yawn-worthy.  

“Mm. I was wonderin’ if you wanted to go for a hike around the area.” Joel suggests. 

“With you?”
“That not okay with you?” She must take too long, because he adds, “I’m sure Tommy could-”

“No! No, it’s fine.” Ellie sits up properly, a little confused as to why Joel wants to go. And with her, too- it’s not like he couldn’t leave her behind with the other two while he went and actually had a good time. If he’s capable. “I’ll put my shoes on.”

“ And -”

“And sunscreen, sunblock, whatever. Yeah.” She interrupts, grinning in spite of the exasperation she’s trying to convey.

To Ellie’s surprise, Joel hadn’t meant meandering along the lakeside when he said ‘hike’. Instead, he drives the two of them- with Ellie back in the front seat, her new favourite spot- to a slightly denser area with gentle hills, about twenty minutes away. When they’ve stopped in a mostly-empty parking lot, he walks around the car and blocks Ellie from getting out when he opens her door. She’s reminded, suddenly, of being sick over two months ago now, of Joel standing like this and protecting her from her own fear of throwing up. It had felt so unnatural to turn to him for anything, back then, and now Ellie doesn’t even protest as he sprays bug repellent up and down her arms and legs. She tries to hate it, thinking of how pathetic she must seem for him to feel obligated to do this, but the emotion doesn’t come.

“Said you were worried ‘bout the mosquitos,” He offers by way of explanation, allowing her to hop out of the car and steal the repellent to spray at him until it accidentally goes in his eyes and he takes it back. “It ain’t a long trail, less than two hours. Nothin’ we can’t handle.”

Ellie puffs out her chest. “And I have some hill -arious puns to keep us going!”

Joel appears to consider something dire as he leads her onto the narrow dirt path. The trees are thick, but their leaves are sparse enough that the pale brown soil of the trail is scattered in sunlight. Ellie follows Joel up a gentle slope and watches where he tells her to look out for rocks. When she wonders aloud if she could make a spear out of one of the sharper rocks and a branch off of a nearby tree, Joel rolls his eyes and tells her to stop that line of thinkin’ right now. 

“It would take someone boulder than me not to follow that order.” She says. 

They keep walking, and Ellie hits each tree they pass with a stick she found until Joel confiscates it and she’s only allowed to use it as a walking stick. 

“The hill’s gettin’ a little steeper up ahead, watch your step,” he warns.

“I’ll get over it.” It’s a delayed reaction, but the look Joel throws Ellie over his shoulder is worth the wait. 

“That is so goddamn stupid.” He says, turning back to the front. Ellie swears she can see his shoulders shaking. 

“You laughed, motherfucker.” 

“I didn’t laugh.”
“Yes you did!” 

They walk for a while longer, not silent but quiet. Ellie drops in any puns she can think of from time to time, and Joel critiques them like it’s his job, but mostly it’s just walking. It’s nice; it’s still warm, despite being a little less so than the past few days, and there’s a soft breeze as they near the peak of the hill. Joel’s fast, but Ellie can see him slowing his pace whenever he realises that she’s falling behind. She pointedly doesn’t let it be anything more than a convenience of saving her breath when she doesn’t have to complain. 

There’s no view. The hill doesn’t go high enough to look out at anything, and it’s only when they get to a grassier clearing that Joel turns to face Ellie and says, “Alright. We’ll turn around here.”

She stares at him. “What about the lookout?”

“Lookout?”

“We’re hiking up a hill. I had assumed there would be something to look at.” She crosses her arms. “If you’re about to give me some shit about ‘the journey is more valuable than the destination’, I’m about to change the shape of my forehead against a tree.”

Joel does not approve this message. “We didn’t go up a mountain, kid. Look at a bug, or somethin’.” 

“Boring. There are bugs in DC.” Ellie walks a little way up into the clearing and sits down on the ground, pleased when Joel follows her second later. He grunts as he sits beside her, and they stare at the honey-barked trees for a moment. “Are there animals?”
“Birds, sure.”

Ellie hums, using a twig to dig into the dirt between her and Joel. He passes her a water-bottle, and she drinks a little less than she wants. He’ll start with his shit about being dehydrated if she starts chugging. 

She draws an unflattering picture of her father in the dirt and then one of a spider, scuffing her heel into it when she catches Joel watching.

“Did you ever think about running away, when you were younger? Like- like going into the forest, or something, and learning to survive?” Joel is quiet for just long enough that Ellie feels inclined to continue. “I was thinking about it the other day. Like, getting my backpack and some of your fucking muesli bars,” The corner of Joel’s mouth lifts slightly, “And heading out on my own. Forever. Away from everything, so I wouldn’t have to-” She shakes her head, changing course. “You think I would make it a week?”

“With your packin’ priorities? Doubt it, kiddo.” 

She elbows him. “Asshole. I could survive for ages in the wild. I would like, carve my own bow and arrow, or something. I could probably tame a bear and ride it around, too.”

“Not exactly ‘the wild’ with so many houses around. You’d end up headin’ onto someone else’s property and gettin’ yourself locked up from trespassing’.” 

“Better than being locked up in the White House.”

“No, it ain’t.” Joel nudges Ellie, and she looks at him. “And it won’t be forever, you know that. Three more years.”

“Three and a half. More, if my dad gets re-elected.” Ellie digs the twig into the dirt with slightly more ferocity and it snaps. “I sound fucking spoiled, but whatever. It’s shitty.”

“It is.” He says. She glares at nothing.

“Even when I do get to leave, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Without-” You, she wants to say. The horrible truth, that if Ellie ever stops belonging to her father she will also have to stop seeing Joel, Tommy and Tess. All of it. They’ll forget her and she’ll have to remember them, all by herself. Left behind. Ellie wonders if she’ll ever be able to get a good enough grip on anything that it doesn’t slowly slip away from her. “-Without Théo to make me burritos.” She finishes. She can feel Joel watching her. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re getting senile,” Ellie glances up to see him roll his eyes, and smirks. “You’ll retire. Where are you going, what are you doing?”

Joel pauses to think. “Might leave DC. Head out here, buy a smaller place. Go fishin’.”

“Sure that won’t be too much excitement?” Ellie snarks. 

“I like the quiet.” Captain Obvious replies. “Won’t have any goddamn teenagers to worry ‘bout, at least.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Ellie breezes through the second stinging reminder of how temporary this is, and breaks her twig into even smaller pieces against a rock. “I’m just glad I won’t be there to smell it. You already stink.”

“I smell fine, you little shit.” He says moodily. “Better’n you if you ain’t got somebody remindin’ you to shower.”

Unfair. Ellie’s only needed a reminder like, three times. In her defence, Joel and Tess have extremely sensitive nostrils. “Rude.”

Another silence stretches between them. When Ellie looks at Joel again, he’s watching the treeline where the trail ends, wary even when he’s not noticeably tense. She’s not sure what he expects- nobody even knows she’s here, it’s not like an armed assassin is going to come and shoot her in the middle of fucking Virginia. She’s sometimes tempted to ask her all the ways she could’ve died in the time he’s known her, in his paranoid opinion, but she thinks it might take the rest of her father’s presidential term just to review the first month. 

“How long do you think it would take you to find me if I did run away?” She asks instead, as casually as she can. Joel takes it seriously anyway, flashing her a stern kind of look before he replies.

“You plannin’ something I should know about?”

“Nope. It’s hypothetical.”

“Uh-huh,” He narrows his eyes. “Well, it depends.”

“...On?” Ellie prompts.

“Did you go durin’ the day or at night?”

“Um. Let’s say early morning, like- four o’clock.”

“M-hm. How’d you get out?”

“My window.” 

Joel gives her a sideways look. “The one with alarms on it? C’mon, you can do better than that, kiddo.” 

Ellie frowns, though she’s privately pleased that he’s even bothering to discuss it. “Fine, fuck you. Uh… okay, I sneak out of my room and downstairs, then go out the front door. Does it have an alarm?” Joel’s expression answers that question. “Fucking- okay, well what would you suggest?”

“The property’s alarms and cameras are on all night. Doors locked, too.”

“How am I meant to get out, then?”

“You aren’t.” He says flatly. Ellie throws a handful of grass she’s pulled out of the ground at him in retaliation, rolling away easily when he swipes loosely in her direction. It takes a minute before she realises that, by all evidence, she should’ve probably flinched at that. Maybe her crazy brain is behaving itself again, finally . 

“Whatever. Okay, change of plan, I leave during the day. I tell Tommy that I’m going outside to sit on the pier. It’s-”

“You wearin’ sunscreen?” Joel interrupts. There’s amusement in his eyes that undoes the seriousness of his expression, and Ellie punishes it with even more grass. 

“No. I’m running away, that’s not even a priority. Come on.” She says. “As I was saying , it’s like, eight in the morning. I go outside and head down to the pier, so someone sees it and thinks it’s all cool. Then, I pull some fucking- some fucking Revenant shit and I jump into the lake and swim away, past the property until I get to the public swimming area, which isn’t that full because it’s super early. Then I- oh, by the way, I brought like, extra clothes and supplies and shit in my backpack- so I put those on, right?”

“Right.”

“And I’m blending in, people wouldn’t even know it’s me. I’m a mystery. And I head into the forest and then I’m fucking gone, man. Call me Noah J Rondeau.”

Joel absolutely doesn’t know who that is, but he doesn’t ask. “I give it two hours.”

“What?”

“‘Till I brought you back home. Two hours, tops.”
“Bullshit.” Ellie crosses her arms. “My plan is flawless.”

“I can tell you-”

“Nope. Fuck off, I’m sunbaking.” She says. Ellie does not want to hear Joel dissect her on-the-fly escape plan with that stupid smug smirk on his face. 

“That the kind of attitude you think’s gonna earn you the aux on the way back?”

 “Asshole. You already promised, no take-backs.” She demands, glowering at him. “Whatever gave you that scar on your head obviously hit the part of your brain that’s capable of fun.”

Joel doesn’t have a comeback for that, so she’s pretty much won the debate. He’s actually oddly silent, even for him, when he’d usually find something to say about her being a little shit. Whatever. The guy’s moodier than any of the teenagers Ellie’s ever encountered.

Belatedly, Ellie's breath hitches at what he'd said. I brought you back home. Home. She's not sure how inclusive it was- maybe he just meant his home, his house, his family. But he'd said home and it hadn't sounded immediately wrong enough for her to correct him. She's not sure if that's terrible or something else.

After about half an hour, he nudges her a little more firmly than necessary and gets to his feet. 

“Time to go, Tommy’s cookin’ dinner.” She pauses, furrowing her brow at the edge to his tone that definitely wasn't there before. Her brain catalogues everything she’s potentially done wrong in the past two hours before she can tell it not to- the list is unreasonably long. “Up, Ellie.” He prompts.

“Did an ant crawl up your ass? What’s with the fucking angst, dude?” She gets to her feet slowly, wrinkling her nose as she stretches. 

Joel keeps up the I hate teenagers, especially ones called Ellie look for a second longer, then blinks. “There’s no angst, kid, we just gotta head back.” 

It’s only because she’s spent so long staring at Joel to annoy him that Ellie can see the signs that he’s softened; the irritable divot between his eyebrows becomes just slightly shallower, and his jaw loosens marginally. She slaps his shoulder jovially. Something relaxes in her stomach that she hasn’t realised was tense. “The ant is out! Christmas miracle.”

“There wasn’t a fuckin’ ant, and it’s June.” He grumbles.

“Technicalities, trivialities. Also, profanities, wow. It’s Christmas in Australia- Bill Nye told me that himself, can you believe it?” Ellie says over her shoulder. Joel follows her back onto the track.

“No.”

“I can fully do an Australian accent, I think.” Ellie considers, “G’day. Shrimp on the barbie. Chock-a-block.” Terrible. She looks back. “You know they don’t actually say that? The shrimp thing? They’re actually called prawns. It’s a real issue, I’ve been trying to put it on my dad’s agenda for years now.”

Joel sighs. “How’s that been going?” 

“Limited success. He’s too focused on being a fascist, unfortunately.” She says wistfully, tripping over a stick across the path and yelping. Joel’s jerking her upright by one bicep before she can even make impact, though, and the worst that happens is that she makes a momentary collision against his chest. It’s not the first time. It’s a battle not to be embarrassed anyway.

“Watch where you’re goin’.” He says sternly. Ellie gives him a sheepish grin. 

“I’m always careful, Joel. ‘Alert Ellie’, that’s my street name.” He releases her, and she faces him. “There’s a stick there, by the way. Watch out. It’s borderline unavoidable, and with your joints… They would have to airlift you out of here like one of the cows I showed you.”

He cuffs the back of her head in retaliation. Like before, Ellie anticipates the surge of panic, the inevitable flinching and consequent humiliation and lectures about talking about her feelings from Joel. But there’s nothing- or rather, solely the urge to get him back for it, which she does by kicking the backs of his legs for the next twenty seconds until Joel makes her walk in front of him again under threat of jogging the rest of the way. 

* * *

The last morning in the wooden room dawns with a matching sense of impending doom. Ellie’s already tired, having lain in bed for about two hours last night reminding herself of everything horrible that’s waiting back in DC and consequently having nightmares about it all. She doesn’t get nightmares. It was her new year’s resolution. But here she was, waking up sweaty and panicked over an ever-expanding group of things that were shitty about her life: her father, her step-mother, her step-family, the horrible starchy smell of her room in the White House, the fucking paparazzi and everything they like saying about her, mindless stretches of weeks where she will only be able to think about what she can never have, or what’s been taken from her. What she’s lost. Ellie, according to Joel, asks a ‘lot of goddamn questions’, but when her brain starts to sink into that concrete-scented place it goes far too often, she can feel any curiosity about anything go with it. Weeks will pass and Ellie won’t care enough to wonder about anything. It’s inevitable and she fucking dreads it, hates it, hates her own mind for making the stale blankness so unavoidable. It’s completely unreasonable that she can’t just decide to have energy. Maybe even decide that some thoughts are stupid and get rid of them without needing the pills in her bag to cheat her way out of it.

It takes four (increasingly impatient) reminders from Tommy that breakfast is ready for Ellie to get out of bed, which is around the time she notices that her window is streaked with rain. She waits for a long moment, disappointment blossoming when the gentle pattern of water on leaves is accompanied by rumbling thunder. Joel says there’s no swimming if there’s a storm- he probably had a statistic to back it up, but Ellie had cut him off.

So much for the final swimming lesson he’d promised yesterday after dinner. And for the ‘best goddamn behaviour’ I promised in return, she thinks glumly. Joel had somehow predicted that she was going to be pissed off today, and had made it very clear that he wasn’t going to put up with her bullshit if she decided to be a dick about heading back to DC. She’d meant to start the not-asshole resolution by packing, something which Ellie disappeared to do and then promptly did not, in favour of drawing a very detailed dick on the list and sticking it on Joel’s bedroom door. Tess appreciated her line work. 

Now, she regards the clothing strewn around the room with little interest and goes downstairs to eat. Tommy’s made pancakes in a bid to cheer her up, but he pretends it’s just because he had the mixture. 

“You wake up on the wrong side of the bed or somethin’, sunshine?” He asks, sliding another perfectly browned pancake onto her plate. Ellie drowns it in syrup and forces something resembling a smile. 

“Nope. Just tired. Me and your mom were-”

“You better stop there if you want any more of those, El-Bell.” Tommy points a spatula at her in warning. Ellie smirks and digs into the breakfast, humming in appreciation. Even in today’s shitty mood, she can fuck with a pancake. Of course, this thought prompts the memory of losing her sense of taste for weeks at a time in the pits of blankness last winter and early this year. She forgot to eat for so long that she almost had to go to hospital- is that on her file? Is that why Joel’s so adamant about the fucking muesli bars? It’s not worth getting into over breakfast. 

“Speak of the devil,” Tommy says when Joel comes into the kitchen, even though they weren’t saying anything at all. “You came back for more?”

“No,” Joel pats his stomach once and looks at Ellie. “Where’s your bag? I’ll put it in the trunk.”

“We’re leaving already?” Ellie sounds more dismayed than she wants to, though it’s genuine. “I thought we were waiting ‘til the afternoon.”
“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” Joel says. “I’ll take the stuff out now. ‘Sides, it’s rainin’. Ain’t much to do around here.”

“Just because you’re desperate to stop hangin’ out with us, doesn’t mean we all are, brother.” Tommy says, in a way which isn’t discernibly sarcastic enough to offset the sudden realisation that Joel may not like it here. Might not want Ellie to be here, at all. 

He didn’t swim for a few days when they first arrived, until Ellie basically forced him to teach her. He’s been arguing with Tess, or being moody and silent with Tess, and it’s because of Ellie that they’re being forced to stay here together when probably the only thing they want is space, and the goddamn reason why they want space in the first place is because of Ellie, too. He felt obligated to take her on a hike yesterday- he made a point out of saying that he looked forward to a future with no teenagers around, how did she miss that? 

She even made him explain the rules of fucking football to her. 

Ellie was stupid to miss the signs, the ways he’s been pretending this whole time. This trip is a means to an end, a way to avoid David and keep her from making all their lives for difficult with her stupid fucking panic attacks and provocations of her father that are apparently even more inconvenient than she’d thought, and she was dumb enough to see it as a sign of something else. He wants to leave as soon as he can.

Ellie squashes down the heavy-set ache that blooms between her ribs and shoves a big chunk of pancake into her mouth, speaking around it. “Haven’t packed.”
Tommy’s eyebrows shoot up and he busies himself clearing up the cooking gear as Joel’s expression hardens. “You remember when I asked you to do that?”
“Relax, Joel.” Ellie says, making her voice purposefully patronising. If he’s going to be a dick about wanting to leave that badly, she’ll show him exactly how shitty she could’ve been this entire time. She’s actually been trying to be better, too. If Joel’s this fucking excited not to be here, it’s basically Ellie’s right to reinforce that for him. “It’s not a first world problem if I’m not packed. I’ll survive it, unless you’ve got a death-rate statistic about teenagers who didn’t follow the unnecessary instructions of their fucking Secret Service guards.”

He’s frowning like something’s wrong instead of frowning like he’s mad, which is not what Ellie wants him to think right now. “Kid-”

“Oh my god, fine, I’ll fucking pack, don’t shit yourself!” She stands up quick enough that her chair squeaks across the floor. Tommy’s shoulders visibly rise as he cringes. “I’ll be quick, since you’re clearly dying to get out of here..”

“Now, just hold on a second-”
“Fuck off, Joel!” Ellie snaps, stalking out of the kitchen and up to her room. Was it an overreaction? Potentially. She had also potentially been under the impression that Joel didn’t mind being on this trip, and he’d want to hang out for the morning even if there was nothing to do. She feels more stupid than anything else. The memory of her conversation with Tess reemerges, and with it comes the guilt.

You’re not his fucking family, or even his friend. You’re work. You’re hard fucking work, and you’re the reason why him and Tess can’t be together. Why would he want to stay here a moment longer than he has to? He’s dying to get some space. They’re all excited to go. There’s nothing about you that makes them want to spend time with you. There’s nothing about you for them to like. 

The sky is covered enough that Ellie can see her reflection in the window where it’s usually too bright. She’s nothing special- like, there’s nothing about the way she looks which is really appealing, and that’s not just her own mind. The tabloids say the same thing, Christine says the same thing, everyone must think the same thing. Even if she’s not measuring it in the way she did when she was hoping for something with Riley, and it’s just about looking like a nice person, Ellie can’t see it. She doesn't have deep, soft eyes like Joel, or the easy smile of Tommy. She doesn’t have the relaxed kind of toughness that Tess emanates. She’s not tall like Jesse, or pretty like Dina, or magnetic like Cat. And what do you have inside, that makes up for what you’re lacking outwardly?

Ellie’s thought about the first impression she gives a few times. She used to make sure she looked angry and nothing else, when she’d start at a new group home or school, because it was all about ensuring that nobody messed with her for a while (with limited success).

What do Joel, Tommy, or Tess think of her? She was a mess when she met all three of them, more so with the latter two. With Joel, she was more exhausting than anything else. Does he still see her that way? Is she still that way? Ellie’s heard that she’s a difficult kid. There’s nothing to say otherwise, so it’s likely that she still is.  

She pulls her hair down from its ponytail and puts it up again. She looks too old to be anything close to cute (not a bad thing), but she’s too young to really seem mature either. She can’t see a point of interest in the way her face is shaped, the colour or shape of her eyes. If she saw herself somewhere, she doesn’t think she’d be intrigued enough to spend more than a split-second noticing her face. 

Ellie looks down at her chest, her stomach, her legs, and it’s all so forgettable. People asked her, when she forgot to eat for a while, if it was because she disliked something about the way her body looked, but it wasn’t. Ellie avoids looking at herself too much to form an opinion on the way her body or face are. She’s considered that if she started paying attention, she might start disliking it enough to become a problem. It can be interesting and horrible to think of all the spirals her brain could start falling into if she really wanted it to. 

She looks up at her reflection again, and there’s someone behind her. 

“You weren’t kiddin’.” Joel says, surveying her distinctly unpacked clothing. 

Ellie blinks, making her face as impassive as his. She’s practised. “I want privacy.”

“Too damn bad, kid. You get privacy when you follow my goddamn instructions.” Joel moves towards her duffel bag, crumpled in the corner, and Ellie remembers the pills a moment before he reaches for it.
“Don’t!” She says, too loudly. Joel straightens up, his mouth a thin line. 

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Ellie? Didn’t we speak about this just last night?” He asks, carefully at a lower volume. “We agreed you were gonna be mature ‘bout this. I know you don’t want to leave-”
“You don’t know anything. I might’ve wanted to go since- since we fucking got here!”

His expression reflects the weakness of this argument, and Ellie flushes. “Right. Either way, we’re goin’ soon, so pack your goddamn clothes up like I told you to.” 

“I will . Get the fuck out.”
A muscle in Joel’s neck tenses, and Ellie can see him trying not to raise his voice. “First you’re going to tell me what’s goin’ on with you. Talk to me, instead of bein’ all angry. You know better than this.”

“ You’re angry, not me!” Ellie says, definitely much angrier. “If you’re that fucking desperate to leave, go! Tommy can drive me back himself, I don’t need you here.” 

“Somehow I doubt Tommy’s gonna want to deal with your disrespectful ass for four hours by himself!” Joel retorts, flaring up the way Ellie wants him to. It’s not satisfying. 

Before she can respond, Tess appears at Ellie’s door, towelling off her hair. She pauses and looks between them. “The fuck’s going on here? You two having a stand-off?” She asks mildly. 

Frustratingly, Ellie doesn’t have a chance to answer. Joel and Tess engage in one of their silent communications within seconds, and she heads downstairs, calling out to Tommy about the smell of the food. Ellie whirls on Joel, seething. He puts one hand forward in what she assumes is supposed to be a calming movement.

“Sit down and tell me-”

“Tell you what’s going on with me?” Ellie finishes for him, curling her hands into fists. “‘Cause you’re all about communication, aren’t you?” 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

Ellie scoffs humorlessly. “Fuck you, man. How fucking inconvenient is it for you- acting like you give a shit about me in the hopes that Tess will take you back? It’s embarrassing to watch, it’s- it’s cruel. You’re cruel, you’re a fucking asshole, pretending you care just for her to see. Just ‘cos you’re waiting for her to like you again, right? Maybe then you wouldn’t be so fucking cold, if anyone wanted you. Do you love her, Joel? Is it special? Worth all this, worth dealing with a kid you hate just to show her how good you can be? Tommy, too, like he doesn’t look at you sometimes like he’s remembering something terrifying. For the record, it’s not my fucking problem that she used me getting my dad to hit me as a reason to end things. Stop blaming me for it- for everything, actually, ‘cos it’s not my fucking fault that you’ve clearly got some vendetta against me, or that Tess needed an excuse to get away from whatever the hell you are. You’re fucked, Joel. You’re stuck twenty years ago trying to- to fix shit that you messed up, with Tess or whoever , and you’re using me to do it. I don’t care, I don’t give a shit about any of it, but don’t hate me for not seeming fine enough the past few days for her to want you back. You’re stupid if you think I was ever actually the reason she left you. You’re stupid.

‘Don’t think I don’t see that you never wanted this job. That’s what Marlene said, from the day you started. Couldn’t care less about me, or my fucking problems, or David, or any of it. You can’t wait to get back to DC now that you’ve realised your plan to get Tess back didn’t work, and all you got was some fucking teenager who- who you actually convinced, just for a minute, that you were here to help, right? Screw you, Joel. I don’t care, but screw you for doing that. I’m not here for you to use for your fucking redemption. To make up for all the people you couldn’t protect, or some saviour complex bullshit. But hey, there’s still time. I know- maybe if I just fucking killed myself you’d be able to tell her how hard you tried to stop it. I’ll be out of the way, too, then she’ll really- ”
“ Ellie .” 

She’s never heard Joel say her name that way. She’s never heard anyone say her name that way. Properly, really mad. Full of wrath, shock, stony coldness. She hasn’t seen him angry like this- or at least, not in her direction. 

It all came out wrong. So, so wrong. Ellie stares at Joel and she wishes she’d meant more of it, so she could feel the release she’d wanted. This sinks sour into her stomach and rots there immediately. It'll stick with her a long time, she thinks, what she's said to him. 

“Pack your goddamn clothes and bring your bag downstairs within fifteen minutes.” 

Joel turns and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. It’s hard for Ellie to catch her breath.

Chapter Text

Joel doesn’t speak to Ellie for several days.

Well, that’s not strictly true. Firstly, the almost-silence is definitely mutual, and secondly, he does say some things. Like, get out of the car, we’re back in DC, or get your lunch from the kitchens, or you’re late for your self-defence class and I ain't carryin' you. Not exactly the preferred, I forgive you for what you said and we don’t ever need to discuss it again. She’s reminded of the first week that he worked for her- how bitter it had felt being protected by someone who clearly despised her. It’s worse now, knowing that Ellie’s given him a reason to feel that way beyond a personality clash. Even the absence of David and her father aren't enough to make up for it.

She doesn’t speak to Tess or Tommy either, mostly because she doesn’t think she could stand to look at either of them, knowing that they will have heard from Joel about the awful things she said. It’s sort of hilarious that she’s spent so much time trying to seem cool and funny and likeable in front of them, only to ruin it all with a fucking temper tantrum. She's come to the conclusion that the words Ellie Williams and likeable cannot and should not be forced into the same stratosphere- it was pointless to try. Ellie has been grating on people since she was old enough to realise its inevitability.

Still, she can’t avoid Joel himself the way she wishes she could; she’s not allowed to. Even disregarding his requirement to follow her to her self defence classes and the sessions with Frank (where she refuses to talk at all), he insists on checking on her every few hours. It’s as if he just wants to remind her that she’s not free any longer; not that Ellie's mad, so much as she is regretful. He’s got every right to make her life a living hell right now- he could do worse. She’s had worse done to her. If she’d pulled this shit at the Grahams’, she’d be without food for three days. Her own father wouldn’t have let her even start to say the shit she did before he gave her a bruise to remember it by. Ellie’s been able to move past all that. She’s not sure why this jars her so much, why Joel's silence is the only thing to really hurt. Not until she's lying in bed and sleep will not come, and the list of things Ellie regrets has grown several feet.

The thing- or one of many things- is: Ellie misses him. In her stupid guilt, she’s trying to admit things, and that is one of the first concepts to really stick. She liked talking to Joel, liked feeling like somebody was on her team (or at least, not on the opposing team), liked having somebody who knew things about her that had previously been buried under a headstone reading Riley Abel. 

There are other things she’s admitting. For example, accusing Joel of using her physical and mental health as leverage to get back together with Tess is probably one of the least grounded accusations she made in their argument. Even removing the obvious fact that Joel and Tess simultaneously not caring and also caring enough for her mental or physical health to have any impact on their relationship aren’t exactly sympatico, Ellie’s pretty sure that Joel would’ve given up on the cause by now if it were true. She’s not ‘getting better’; there's playing the long game, and there's just plain stupid. People who are shitty the way she is… it’s not the sort of thing that can really improve, and Joel’s smart enough to see that (granted, Alistair fucking Gusler is smart enough to see that, so not the highest of compliments). If he started working in Ellie’s security detail as a way to get Tess back, logic would prevail sooner or later and he’d give the whole thing up- it’s not like there are many benefits to make up for the damage done to his relationships. Certainly not now that Ellie’s said what she did.

She’s not sure how to explain that she didn’t mean it, because while she was saying it, it had all felt so real. She’d meant the parts about Joel wanting to leave. She’d sort of meant the part about him resenting her for breaking them up. How is she supposed to comb through one of the most ridiculous speeches of her life (including several written by her father’s guy about loving her new family) and tell him that she meant some of the hideous shit she said, but most of it was made up? It’s impossible. Her entire life is impossible. 

* * *

On Tuesday, relief comes in the form of a weight that keeps Ellie in bed for the entire morning. Its ache is a comfort; Ellie recognises it, invites the blankness into her room with open arms. She knows this throbbing in her mind, the sudden urge to bury herself in blankets and think more slowly of all the hard things. It’s separate from specific moments- it was there before Riley, then after, and it doesn’t cling to what’s happened with Joel either. It’s a far broader kind of hurting than any one thing, so constant that it will eventually turn into white noise, and Ellie will be able to look at the world with a blurred kind of apathy. 

Ellie cries without wrinkling her face, tears tickling her temples and sliding into her hair. She’s endured so many involuntary memories of what she said to Joel, the way she acted, that it has turned into something entirely different, and she lets the fresh wave of guilt fade into a much deeper pool. She is overwhelmed and yet, completely still. 

It’s getting bad again, she’d said to Riley, just a few days before the worst had happened. She’d wanted Riley to try to stop it, to help, but now Ellie understands her friend’s dismissal of it all. Her indifference, maybe. She feels it herself. 

It’s getting bad again, is a relief. Finally, something Ellie is familiar with, something to say again about. She’s been jerked and dragged in a million different emotional directions over the past few weeks; letting the world blur together, letting herself be pulled into the depth of it all, is less daunting than trying to resurface and seek out one of the newer feelings. She knows how this goes. 

Maybe things are harder to deal with when Ellie's problems are attacking her, angry wasps flying at her face. If it’s coming from one place- inside her, filling her up- she can let each new hurt dissolve into the others, and she can let it engulf her once rather than hit her in a series of blows. A constant ache in her bones rather than stinging on her skin. 

Ellie pretends she is fading into the monotonous white expanse of the ceiling, a dead insect lost in a fresh coat of paint. She goes back to sleep.

***

“Ellie?” Joel is jostling her, pulling the blankets roughly down from over Ellie’s face. His own features are drawn, eyes wide. “Goddamnit, Ellie, what’re you doing?” 

She sits up and looks at him. The blankness is not bone-deep yet, and embarrassment shoots up the back of her neck, heating her face. “Sleeping.”
“It’s noon.” He pulls back, sitting on the edge of the bed, still watching her like something awful is going to happen. He’s never sat there before- not that Ellie can remember, anyway. “You went to bed early last night. You didn’t sleep?”

Why are you talking to me? “I did.”

He looks for a moment longer, and Ellie fidgets. “Don’t sleep with the comforter over your head. You could suffocate.”
“I won’t suffocate.” He gives her a dark look, and Ellie swallows harshly. “I won’t do it again.” 

Instead of standing up and leaving the room like he should, because he hates her, Joel stretches out a hand and touches Ellie’s forehead with the backs of his fingers, cooler than she expected. She grips the comforter until her fingers go white so that she won’t flinch, nauseated by the reemergence of the urge to do so. The Joel she wasn’t afraid of was not a Joel who hated her. 

“What- ?”

“You’re in bed at noon. I was checkin’ for a temperature.”

Be angrier, Ellie wants to say suddenly. Yell at me, hit me, I hurt you on purpose . Do it back.

But Joel doesn’t hurt her. Instead, he stands and picks up something from the floor beside her bed, putting it on Ellie’s lap. His expression shutters a bit, the alarm from before completely gone. “This arrived today.”

“A tablet?” Ellie opens the box, proving the affirmative. “I- what’s it for?”

“It’s for you to talk to your friends from the lake. I told you I’d figure it out, remember?” Joel says flatly. “Ordered it the morning after you met them.”

The clarification that this was a gesture made before Ellie ruined everything doesn’t escape her, but she’s too busy trying not to get emotional about everything to dwell on it right now.

“Thanks.” She says quietly. Joel nods once, eyes on some of the posters on Ellie’s opposite wall. She wishes he would say something about one of them, but when he speaks it’s in a purely clinical manner.

“It’s set up already with the security features- no tracking from external tech, no personalisation, no social media. But you’ll have access to the internet, news, streaming services.” 

“Is it approved by Marlene?”
Now Joel glances down at Ellie, just for a second. “Not yet. You’ll need to be smart about it, don’t do anythin’ new without my approval. Understood?”

“Yeah.” Ellie turns on the tablet and stares at the screen as it lights up. After months of either a flip-phone or nothing at all, having access to a whole world of information is somewhat dazzling. And it means a lot- of course it does. But she’s not sure Joel would do the same thing now, if he had the choice. Her own fault. “So fucking cool.” 

“Théo has your lunch ready, before you get addicted to that thing. And this doesn’t mean you can spend all your time here on that damn screen, you’ll only use it when you need to. Got that?”
Something warm flickers in Ellie’s chest, and she nods. “Got it.”

Joel nods again. “Get your lunch and eat outside, then you can have it for the afternoon.” 

Feeling vaguely scolded, but not at all in a bad way, Ellie nods and puts the tablet carefully on her bed. Joel follows her down to the kitchens for the first time since getting back to DC, before they head outside for Ellie to eat on the grass where it’s private. He’s as silent as he’s ever been, and she’s tense the whole time, switching from grateful to guilty to anxious with each passing minute. It’s a step towards things being okay, maybe, but Ellie feels like she’s got an entire marathon to run if she’s ever going to get there. And she's very tired.

* * *

We thought you were actually dead, Dina writes a few hours later. Are you dead?

Not yet. Ellie replies. 

It took a while to text all three of them individually on the tablet, making sure she didn’t get their numbers wrong and cause a massive security issue, but within thirty seconds of receiving her first message Dina had created a group-chat (as if they’re all actually friends and Ellie’s not weird for messaging people she spent one evening with). So far it’s mostly just been updates on weird tourists who they’ve seen down at the lake, and Ellie constructing believable lies about her fake life. According to her messages, she’s currently staying with her cousins for a few days while her (alive! Surprise, surprise) mother paints their house. She’s painting Ellie’s room blue, and Ellie got to pick out the shade herself. Her mother misses her a bunch but Ellie’s enjoying the extended holiday. 

Jesse broke Chrissy’s glasses, Cat writes. Ellie tries to remember who Chrissy was until a follow-up message comes through. That’s the woman who runs the bar btw.

Fake id still didn’t work :( Jesse adds, and Ellie tries not to smile. 

Dina replies, Why would it work when it literally said you were 34?? You cannot pass for thirty sorry baby you just have a rlly young face

Ellie wrinkles her nose. PDA is no less gross online, it turns out. Cat agrees in a private chat, and sends a picture of a new tattoo that she got of a dragonfly on the back of her thigh. Ellie has to take deep breaths to recover, which is so, so stupid. 

She spends a little time texting the group and more time texting Cat until the tablet tells her that she’s ‘almost out of screen time’ for today. 

“No fucking way,” Ellie stares at the notification in disbelief. Did Joel put fucking parental controls on this thing? On closer examination, yes- she’s limited to a horrifying four hours each day on the tablet, which she has used almost all of this afternoon. “That is such bullshit !” She tells the screen emphatically, texting a quick goodbye to Cat and tossing it to the far side of her bed. 

Normally, Ellie would’ve gone out and berated Joel for limiting the time she spends on the iPad (like some kind of elementary schooler- it doesn’t matter ) , but in the absence of its distraction she’s reminded exactly why she can’t do that. Joel still hates her and she still hates herself for what she said. Ellie’s not desperate enough to voluntarily ask him for a favour, especially when she suspects he wouldn’t have said yes to extending her time on the tablet even when they were on okay terms. 

Besides, it only takes another day for Ellie to realise that she doesn’t always want to text people, either. Maybe she’d been removed from her own thoughts a bit with the excitement of making human contact online for the first time in months (excluding Joel), but once the exhilaration has worn off Ellie discovers that the tired ache that she’d welcomed just a couple of days ago has been waiting for her this whole time. Again, she spends the morning in bed and turns the tablet silent when she hears the first message come in- Cat is away camping with her parents, anyway, so it’s either Dina or Jesse and they both use the group-chat as if it’s a private messaging space all the fucking time . They’ve planned dates on there, which is something Ellie’s sure she’ll laugh at when it feels like her throat could actually form the sound. 

Joel comes in and makes her go down to lunch, sitting outside like always. Ellie watches him avoid looking at her and hates, hates, hates herself. She’d say something, only if she were Joel she’s not sure she would ever want to have a conversation again. Not just because of the things she said, but because Ellie’s starting to wonder how he- or anyone, for that matter- can stand her at all. Every relationship she has feels suddenly like a time bomb, ticking away until she ruins it for good. It’s irresponsible to pursue new friendships, knowing this, so Ellie mutes the texts and puts the tablet into a desk drawer. She doesn’t deserve it, anyway. 

***

It’s only when Joel finds Ellie staring at the ceiling with tear-streaked cheeks and matted hair two days later that things change. It doesn’t matter how quickly she wipes her face or forces herself to sit up despite the urge to keep spinning down, down, down. He’s seen it. Is the concern on his face reluctant? Resentful? Real?

He looks down at her for a long moment, both of them frozen in place. “How long’s it been since you had a shower?” 

Ellie’s not sure what she’d expected, but there is something that is far too lonely about Joel finding her sort-of crying in her room after over a week of silence and being mostly concerned with how she might smell. She can’t stop the muscles in her face from contorting into an ugly crumpled mess, nor the choked sound that she muffles with a fist pressed to her mouth. She will not cry more, and not in front of him. She’s stronger than this. Ellie gathers all the loose, messy parts of herself that want to let it happen and pulls them taut. She wipes her face with the back of one hand and stares at Joel’s feet, clenching her jaw and hands into fists.

“I’ll do it now.” She says hollowly. She has to turn sideways to get past Joel and out of the room. “Sorry,” She says, even though it’s not her fault. 

The water burns on the wrong side of too-warm against Ellie, drumming into her with constant pressure until her skin feels tired and bruised. Ellie feels tired and bruised. She cannot summon the energy to stand any longer, so she curls up in the bottom of the glass cubicle and squishes her face into the crook of one elbow, leaning in to the stinging heat.

It takes Joel hammering the door with his fist for Ellie to realise how long she’s been in the shower. The water’s faded to lukewarm, and her fingers and toes are wrinkled. She gets up slowly and turns it off, putting the same t-shirt and sweatshorts back on before she opens the door. Joel is frowning. 

“Why didn’t you call out when I asked if you were alright?” He demands, voice tight and harsh. Ellie takes a step back, feet sliding a little on the fogged-up tiles of the bathroom floor. Her eyes hurt. 

“I didn’t hear.” She says. Joel’s eyebrows knit together even more, and he puts a hand on her shoulder to guide Ellie from the small space, out into the fake bedroom and then into her real one. Instinctively, her eyes flit over to the space on a shelf behind some books where she’s hidden the pills, seeing if Joel’s found them, but he hasn’t. 

She’s considered taking them. Actually, Ellie’s considered it to the point of taking one out of the little bag late at night, when she knows it’ll be a long time before anyone checks on her, but she didn’t go through with it. There’s a part of her that feels like she deserves all this, and she won’t cheat her way out of it before she’s done her penance. 

“So,” Joel says from the doorway, instead of leaving. “I’m thinkin’ you and I need to have a talk, kid.” 

Ellie blinks, startled. When he’d been silent on the whole ‘I just saw you crying in bed and we’re not on speaking terms’ deal, she’d kind of dismissed the idea of ever working this out. 

“About what?” She says, idiotically.

Joel lifts an eyebrow and comes into the room properly, sitting on the edge of Ellie’s bed again and patting the space beside him. “You know what. C’mere.” 

Ellie sits just a little further away than the spot he’d indicated, for Joel’s sake, and picks at the skin around her fingernails. “I- uh,” She starts awkwardly, “I don’t want you to think I’m like, freaked out. There was dust on my ceiling, or something, I wasn’t-”
“Ellie.” Joel’s tone is firm, and Ellie searches it for anger. She wants there to be anger. “We need to talk, kid, not sit here avoiding the truth. You got it?”

“I wasn’t avoiding the truth.”
He doesn’t address that with more than a quiet sigh, leaning forward with both forearms on his knees. “Right.” 

There’s a pause. Ellie wishes she knew what to say, wishes she had something more eloquent than I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I wish you wouldn’t hate me like I hate me, I wish I was different, I didn’t mean most of it and the bits that I did mean came out all wrong, I’m sorry, please just look at me like i’m not about to start screaming. 

“Right,” Joel repeats, firmer this time, “I’m going to get a few things outta the way before we discuss them, and you’re going to listen. Clear?” When Ellie nods, he clicks his tongue, catching her eye. “I need to hear it, Ellie.”

“Okay, yes, clear.” She stammers. 

“Good.” Joel takes a long breath. “First, if I ever hear you say that you ‘got’ your dad to hit you again, you can be fuckin’ sure that you’ll learn not to think that shit again. What he did was physical abuse and the only thing that kept me from goin’ after him the minute you told me what happened is his goddamn job title. There is nothing you could’ve done to justify his behaviour and nothin’ you will ever do or say will warrant you being hit by anyone. Somebody hits you, you come to me and I’ll handle them because it’s their goddamn fault. You followin’ so far?”

Ellie hesitates for what is probably too wide of a moment, then clears her throat. “Uh, yeah.” 

Joel’s eyes don’t leave her as he continues, “Speakin’ of fault, then, I don’t know exactly where or when you started letting your imagination run wild, but neither Tess nor myself ever blamed you for the shit that happened between us. And we never will. It ain’t your business- which I’m pretty damn sure you know, too- but there ain’t a single reason for you to take that stuff on as your responsibility, because two grown adults made their own decision. The entire reason we kept this private is to avoid shit like some dumbass teenager thinking it’s her problem when we decide to do our fuckin’ jobs instead of neglecting ‘em. Our relationship is our business, Ellie, and you know better.”

Ellie’s face feels hot, and she shuffles backwards to cross her legs up on the bed. She presses into a spot where one of her fingers has started bleeding. “I didn’t mean all of that stuff about you and Tess.”

“See, I’m not convinced, kiddo.” Kiddo. Ellie tries very hard not to be weird about that, and fails. “You’re tellin’ me you didn’t mean it, but your behaviour the last few days of the trip says otherwise- don’t think I didn’t notice that you suddenly lost interest in findin’ out what had happened between us.” Joel flexes his hands. Ellie blinks rapidly and tries to come up with a defence case, unsuccessfully. “What I think, and what she thinks, is that you might’ve misunderstood what she said back on the porch when she told you what happened. You’ve got a real habit of blamin’ yourself, or assumin’ other people are angry with you when they ain’t. Getting yourself all worked up thinking that Tess and I- what’d you say? ‘Resented’? ‘Hated’ you for the part you played? Bullshit, girl. No sense in it.” 

Ellie glances up at him at that, the slightly fonder sternness she recognises from the more recent months. However distant Joel’s seemed the last few days, she can feel him here, now. Trying. It’d be shitty of her not to try a bit, too.

“I’m sorry.” She starts, voice rasping. God, pull yourself together. Joel shakes his head once, twice, and turns himself to face her a little more. 

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” He says, not unkindly- though not completely without sharpness. “Just hold on.”

“Okay.” She purposefully makes her voice a little higher, a little more casual, to make up for the rejected apology. “Okay, cool.”

Joel exhales. “Now, I can’t say I wasn’t surprised when I heard you sayin’ that I have a vendetta against you, Ellie. S’that really what you think?”

That’s not the part Ellie had expected him to bring up next, and she’s silent for a second, opening and closing her mouth. “I- not really, I guess. Not all the time. I thought, uh-” She swallows again and presses the ends of her fingers against her closed eyes until there are white fireworks spotting her vision. “Okay, fuck, just-” 

“It’s alright.” Joel says. Maybe that’s a kind of tipping point for Ellie.

“No, it’s not.” She lifts her head to look at him, dismayed. “It’s not fucking alright, Joel, I- I ruined everything! I was a total asshole! You should be yelling at me, or something, not sitting down and lecturing me about blaming myself for things that are absolutely my fucking fault. Aren’t you fucking furious at me? You should be-”
“Stop.” Joel says severely. Ellie stops. “Stop that. In case you forgot, I’m the adult here. I know what’s best for you, kid, and it’s up to you to do what I say, when I say it. Remember?” She nods. “There you go. And I say we’re talkin’ this out, not havin’ an argument or yelling or spiralling into unnecessary blame games. None of that bullshit.”

Ellie doesn’t think it’s unnecessary to blame her, since she fucked all this up in the first place, but Joel’s expression and tone don’t leave a lot of room for argument. “Fine.” She says.

“Start that whole thing over without tellin’ me how you think I should react. Just tell me ‘bout what you’re feeling.”

She’s a little reminded of one of her hours with Frank, although he’s never this bossy about it. He’s always asking whether she’d like to share something, or kindly reminding her that all emotions are normal and okay. It’s nice to be treated that way in her sessions with him, she supposes, but it’s not nearly as motivating as Joel’s unsmiling eyes are in actually getting Ellie to talk. It might have something to do with how much this feels like a rarity; with Frank, she’s always got their next session to say something if she feels like it. If the past few days have taught Ellie anything, it’s that trying to work up the courage to start an important conversation with Joel is like pulling teeth, and it probably won’t happen again if she keeps fucking it up the way she is now.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “I didn’t mean it- about the vendetta, I don’t think. I get freaked out ‘cos I fuck up like, every day, and I guess I kinda assumed that you would get fed up, or something. Or-” Ellie scrubs a hand across her face, frustrated. “I don’t mean it like that. I don’t think you have something against me, I think I’m a shitty person to be around sometimes and ‘cos I was like, freaked out, I made that a you thing.” 

Joel hums in acknowledgment, and there’s another short stretch of silence. “Why were you freaked out?”

“I don’t know, man, I-” Ellie stops herself as his expression edges a little closer to exasperation, and shifts uncomfortably. She huffs out a breath and looks down. “I had a good time on that trip, I guess. You knew I was gonna be pissed about leaving.”

“I did. Seemed a little too pointed in my direction, though. ‘Specially after we talked about it the night before.” 

“You wanted to leave.” It’s hard not to make it sound accusatory, but it’s still a sore point. “And you made it obvious, and it pissed me off because I wanted you to- um, to want to stay. I was having a good time.”

Joel looks almost as unimpressed as Ellie feels with herself. “Kid,” He says, “Did you think for a second ‘bout talking that over with me instead of keeping it inside ‘til you burst?” 

“...No.” Ellie says. 

“Figures.” Joel replies flatly. “There’s no secret reason why I wanted to leave, nothin’ that I was trying to get away from. We had a schedule and the weather was bad, is all. We could’ve stayed longer if you’d just asked .”

Ellie swears under her breath. She’d anticipated how shitty she’d feel if this conversation ever happened, but she hadn’t expected this level of embarrassment to accompany it. “Didn’t think of that either.” 

“Would’ve been the smart thing to do.” Joel agrees. “On that, too- you don’t fuck up every day, and that’s the kind of talk I don’t want to hear from now on. There isn't a single good reason for me to have something against you, so stop lookin’ for it until you hear it from me, alright?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. That’s what I’m telling you and you better goddamn believe it, Ellie.” Joel raises his eyebrows, “You ready to talk about the next part?”

“What next part?”

“The part where you think I’m using you to make a move on my coworker.” He says unflinchingly. Oh, god.

“I don’t actually think that.” Ellie replies hurriedly, speaking faster and faster to get it all out before the humiliation can set it. “I didn’t until I said it, at least. I was really fucking mad and I was trying to be a dick and- and I don’t know, hurt you bad enough so it would feel like us leaving was also my decision and it all got really fucked, really fast and-”

“Slow down.” Joel interrupts lightly, one hand up to stop Ellie. She frowns at him, breathing heavily. “I know you were mad. I was, too. But-”

“Are you still?” Ellie says. “Mad at me, I mean.”
“No.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“You’re not a bad kid, Ellie.” Ellie sort of wants to hit her head against a wall when he says that, because it’s so blatantly untrue and he must know that. Joel continues, oblivious, “When you lash out like that, there’s always somethin’ going on in that head of yours. I was disappointed- I am disappointed, but not mad.”

Is that worse? Feels like a stupid question, so Ellie ignores the urge to ask it and says, “Cool,” Instead. 

“So, where did it come from? This idea about me usin' you?”

“It came from… my brain. Like, five seconds before I said it.” 

“Hm.” Joel says, giving her absolutely no indication of his feelings. “Can you be more specific, kid?”

“Hippocampus.”

“Ellie.” Joel says, like be serious. That’s probably fair.

“I don’t fucking know, Joel! I had this idea that-” Ellie makes a frustrated sound through her teeth. “I don’t know!”
“What kind of-”
“Look, okay, just- pause for a second, okay?” Ellie gets off the bed and walks to the nearest wall and back, twisting her wet hair in both hands until the shoulders of her t-shirt are wet and clinging. Just say it, just say it, just say it, just- “Okay. Okay . Do you give a shit about me or not?”

“‘Course I do.” Joel says, sounding unusually indignant. Ellie looks at him sharply. “The hell are you talkin’ ‘bout, Ellie?”

“What do you mean, what am I ‘talkin’ ‘bout’?” Ellie imitates his accent without meaning to, throwing her hands up. “You don’t want this job! Marlene said!”

“Marlene doesn’t know shit.” Joel dismisses. 

“Then why would she say it?”
He pauses, then says, “ When did Marlene tell you that?”
Ellie stops in her tracks and considers the question. “Uh. Your first day.”

“And you assumed that had somethin’ to do with you - before I’d ever laid eyes on you? It couldn’t possibly be anything ‘bout the hours, or workin’ with Tess again, or dealin’ with my own business?” 

“...Uh, I did technically assume that it was about me, yeah.”

“Does that still sound smart to you now you’ve said it out loud?”

Ellie spends a few seconds thinking it over, regret and embarrassment growing. “...No.”

“Great. Forget the whole damn idea.” Joel suggests. Ellie wholeheartedly agrees, even if she’d sort of hoped that at some point he would explicitly confirm that he enjoys- or maybe tolerates with some degree of happiness- this job. But she’s been lucky enough today. “Marlene’s never had any idea what she’s on about, anyway. Makes assumptions and says ‘em like they’re facts. Don’t listen to her.”

“Hey.” Ellie says seriously, relishing the confirmation that Joel doesn’t like Marlene either. “That’s my best friend you’re talking about. Queen of my heart, prime minister of my soul, and so on.” 

Joel’s lips twitch. “M-hm.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed once more. “So, are we cool again, or…?”

He sombres, and her stomach sinks. Ellie had been hoping it would end here, that he’d likely forgotten the stupid little thing she’d tagged onto the end of her rant, but his expression signals the opposite. “You know there’s more, kiddo.”

Something a little worse than embarrassment rears its head, and Ellie presses her lips tightly together. “What is it?” She mumbles, one leg bouncing. The lightness she’s trying to infuse into her tone falls flat, and the words just sound shaky coming out of her mouth. 

Joel’s eyes cloud, and he’s looking at a spot just above Ellie’s head when he speaks. “‘Maybe if I kill myself you’ll be able to tell her how hard you tried to stop it’. That’s what you said.” His voice is strained, harsh without being loud. Ellie winces.
“That’s- did you memorise everything I said? Or-”

“Just that part.” Joel says in the same awful way. Her mind races; Ellie’s been able to handle everything they’ve talked about, she’s endured-and-fucking-survived it and they’ve figured it out as much as they can, but this- this isn’t all that stuff. It wasn’t something she only considered as she said it, like the ridiculous bullshit about Tess and Joel. It wasn’t something benign like Joel disliking the job. It was ugly and pathetic and maybe-possibly-definitely true. 

She only realises that Joel’s trying to get her attention when his hand lands on her shoulder. Ellie brushes away the acute desire to put her own hands up in defence and forces a flippant eye-roll. “Oh, well, you know… Don’t shit your pants. I said a whole lot of stuff I didn’t mean.”

“Don’t bullshit me, kid.” Joel snaps immediately, and Ellie pulls back, shaking his hand off. “And don’t roll your goddamn eyes about this. It’s serious.” 

“I know it’s serious. Obviously. I make shitty jokes all the time, Joel.”

Joel stands quickly, turning to face Ellie. She stares up at him and tries not to be intimidated, no matter how much taller he is from here. “You think I got this kind of job because I didn’t notice things, kid? Huh? You think I’ve seen the days you’d let yourself go between eatin’, drinkin’, whatever- and you think I don’t know what that means?”

“I’m fucking forgetful, or something!” Ellie says, eyes burning. She’s on the edge of saying something stupid again, she feels it. There’s so much she could say, so much she could do to make this a conversation they can’t come back from. She could watch this entire thing crash over the edge and let it happen, let it go. 

Like she’s missed a step going downstairs, the image of Riley’s body jolts to the forefront of her mind. The last time she’d let something be destroyed just by watching. Ellie had tracked her down to that fucking parking lot after everyone scattered, concrete sizzling under the rubber of her converses, and she watched her friend vomit and jerk and die. She let it happen. Not just because she watched Riley get addicted to it, not just because she’d convinced herself that it was embarrassing to love the other girl so blatantly when she didn’t feel half as much, but because Ellie truly, literally, let her die.

She’d dialled 9-11, but she didn’t press call. She was naive enough to think that Riley could get through this and she wouldn’t have to get the cops involved, she wouldn’t have to send her best friend to prison or whatever bullshit she’d imagined, they could just leave the carpark and Riley would learn her lesson. Ellie was selfish and stupid. She was determined not to endure her life with Riley in prison for using, and it wasn’t until the choking breaths, thick with bile, had completely silenced that Ellie called anyone at all. Until she realised her mistake. Riley was cold and the ground was hot and Ellie had failed to save her for the last time.

She won’t do it again. 

“Joel.” She says. He looks down again, meeting her eye. “I want- I can’t be here, to talk about this. Otherwise it’s gonna fucking stick to the walls and I don’t- can’t let it happen like that.” She can’t sleep in a room where she’s told Joel something so horrible. 

They go outside. Joel’s just behind Ellie the whole time, solid where she feels shaky, and eventually they’re out at a small pavilion where Ellie ate her lunch a few days ago. 

She’s sorted it as well as she can. She won’t tell Joel the whole truth, if it even exists yet, but she can reveal a softer version. She can make the difficult thing a little easier, if she lets him see enough to be satisfied. 

“Go on,” He says, when she hesitates. He leans against the rungs of the fence bracketing the structure while Ellie stands awkwardly in the middle. 

“Okay. Um,” She swallows and looks away. “So, after Riley died, I was kinda in a shitty place for a long time. Actually, I don’t know if it’s still ‘after Riley died’ now or if that’s just like, reserved for the three weeks right afterwards. Whatever. That’s irrelevant, I think. Anyway, it was also shitty because Riley and me weren’t so good towards the end of it all, and I regretted a lot of stuff. Like, we argued all the time. She was really deep into- well, you know, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, I guess. We both fucked up a lot.” Ellie digs her nails into her palms. “She would say stuff when we fought, like- uh, like what I said to you. The same threat. She knew it would hurt, and I learned how shit it felt, and then I guess- I guess-” 

“You wanted to make me feel bad, and you knew that would work.” 

“...Yeah.”

Joel’s eyes close for a beat. It’s weird, navigating the relief of telling someone this and the something else that comes from not telling him the whole truth. Ellie’s struck by the urge to keep going and let it pour out of her, let him see how much worse it really is, but she won’t do that. That’s not the way to fix things. 

“Kid, look at me.” She does. Joel’s not leaning anymore, stepping closer until Ellie could touch the front of his shirt if she wanted to. His expression is just gentle enough that she doesn’t really want to run away. “I...  understand. The things you’ve been through, Ellie, they’re not fair, not by a long shot. If I could’ve stopped them from happening-” Joel pauses, like she hasn’t kept her expression neutral enough. “I couldn’t have, I know. Nobody could’ve. But I wish you hadn’t been alone, kid. Ain’t what you deserved.”

You don’t know what I deserve. Ellie won’t say it again. Joel’s heard it before, probably knows her well enough by now that he can tell she’s thinking it. “...Thanks.” She says. 

“Don’t need to thank me. And I’m not done, so don’t go thinkin’ you’re off the hook.”

“Am I ever ?” She says, just a touch more weakly than she’d meant to.

Joel rolls his eyes. “Just hold on.” He grows serious, and Ellie’s skin prickles uncomfortably. Here it comes. “ You didn’t need to hear those things from your friend. I didn’t need to hear them from you, either. I don’t know nearly enough about this sorta thing to tell you what to do from here. But I will say this: ending your life won’t fix a damn thing. You’re smarter than that, Ellie. Smart enough to know that threatening somebody with that shit ain’t okay, either. I won’t pretend you’re not a pain in my ass sometimes, but you’re not a cruel kid- not cruel enough to hurt people that way. If I hear you usin’ that to threaten anybody, myself included, you can expect a discussion about a hundred times less pleasant than this one.” 

Ellie swallows thickly and stares at her feet. “Uh-huh.”

Joel’s knuckles aren’t malicious when they brush her forearm. He did it on purpose, she assumes, gentle with Ellie like he’s reminding her that he’s not aiming to hurt the way other people have. It’s complicated, nice and warm and painful and hateful all at once, because he has to know. Surely , he realises that even if he’s not going to hit her, Joel can hurt her worse than most others. She’s felt the beginnings of it the past few days. If he decides to move on, fucking forget all about her-

Ellie steps back, and he doesn’t follow. She twists the fabric at the front of her t-shirt. “It was shitty of me to say that stuff. My bad.”

Joel nods his agreement, but he isn’t smug the way he can be when they’re arguing over something that doesn’t matter. Ellie’s glad for it- she doesn’t want to be the only one who isn’t having fun right now. “You got that right, kid. But for what it’s worth, I…” Joel rubs his jaw, glancing upwards. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to bring all this up. I wanted to give you space, but then this mornin’-”

“I got dust in my eye.” Ellie interjects, hopefully with just enough sarcasm that Joel doesn’t think she’s genuinely trying to lie to him. “I know. It’s cool.”

The last time Ellie stayed with a foster family who really wanted to hug her, out of more than pitiful obligation, she’d been kicked out within a week. The affection hadn’t been handle-able, especially after a few months with the Grahams. It had been too unnerving, that the ant infestation she got by hoarding food under her bed had been met with open arms and fake smiles. After a few days she was kicked out (and grateful for it)- since then, Ellie’s had a consistently negative view of self-identified ‘huggers’. That’s why it’s a relief, rather than anything else, that Ellie’s sure she feels when Joel doesn’t offer.

They stand in silence for a few moments, Ellie wavering between tense and relieved and unsatisfied and determined to be fulfilled by everything they’ve discussed. She has to accept that this is as far as the conversation could ever go; it was her own choice to stop just shy of the entire truth. And Joel’s not even mad anymore, and he said he actually cared about her, and he doesn’t want her to die. All that stuff should mean that Ellie is on top of the world. But just as before, when she goes looking, it is far too easy to find the familiarity of alone once more.

Chapter Text

In an ideal world without security guards and meaningful conversations, Ellie could make a peaceful transition into the final stage of grief regarding her mental health (or lack thereof), and spend the rest of her father’s presidential term in her increasingly fusty room, surviving off of flat cans of Fanta she finds under her bed and staring at the ceiling. Unfortunately, Joel does not agree with her vision. His plan for the betterment of Ellie’s entire life is to force her to wake up at the crack of dawn (nine o’clock) each morning for something akin to CIA torture training (thirty minutes of walking around the gardens), responding to Ellie’s pleas for mercy by throwing muesli bars in her direction. Tommy’s amused assessment that she ‘seems to be less moody these days’ nearly made Ellie throw herself out of the car in frustration.

In the two weeks since the Big Talk, which Ellie has mostly been trying to put out of her head- excluding the part where she and Joel are cool now - he has thwarted her ambitions of rotting in bed with an unnerving level of enthusiasm (by strictly Joel Miller standards), brandishing some bullshit about sunshine and fresh air being beneficial for mental health. If there ever was a time for Ellie to take after her father, it is now, in her dismissal of scientific evidence in favour of her own agenda. 

The tyranny doesn’t stop at nine-thirty, either. Joel is adamant that Ellie should eat three decent meals, none of them consisting of Tommy’s popsicle donations or chicken nuggets, and that she should actually attend her self defence classes and sessions with Frank. It’s diabolical, unfair, and also potentially very slightly nice of him to put this much work into solving her teensy tiny mood problem.

(Neither Frank nor Joel appreciated it when Ellie called it that.)

“Nobody ever has been through worse,” She complains solemnly to Tess, sitting with both legs straight in front of her. “Sylvia Plath could not encapsulate the pain I experience every day. It’s like I’m in the army.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, thirty minutes of walking sounds pretty rough.”

“Not physically. Emotionally .” Ellie slides down the wall until only her head is propped up against it, which proves quite uncomfortable. “Nobody has ever suffered the way I am right now.”

Tess sighs, which is an unfortunate indication that she’s going to say something entirely too genuine for Ellie’s dramatic mood. “You know, kid, Joel doesn’t have to do all this. Might try being happy that he’s putting effort into making your life easier.” She says, completely unhelpfully. Ellie scowls.
“Well, duh.”

Tess laughs lowly, leaning against the doorframe. It’s a little weird seeing all of them in their work clothes after living with them for ten days in civilian clothing, but Ellie’s trying to get used to it again. She’s trying to get used to everything again, which has proved an uphill battle after having a taste of paradise down by the lake. Some days, Ellie can hardly stand to message Dina, Cat, or Jesse, to hear them complain about their perfect lives. There’s only so much that Joel can do to deter the familiar blur from settling into Ellie’s eyes, detaching her from whatever she might feel from moment to moment, and despite more consistently feeling ‘like herself’ she’s unable to completely get rid of the weights in her feet and chest and eyes. She wishes he could understand without her ever having to explain it. Sometimes it feels like Ellie is hardly a person, just a collection of sad, raw pieces all bunched together under her blankets, and if she’s pulled loose she’ll be all cold and apart forever. But she can’t say that to Joel, just like she can’t tell him about most of the thoughts she has these days, like Riley and the pills and how often she imagines the way her body might arrange itself on the concrete far beneath her bedroom window. Ellie turns it all into white noise. She’s being very melodramatic.

“Duh.” Tess echoes amusedly. “But I’m serious.”

 One of a trillion downsides to what Ellie pulled back at the lake is that Tess seems to have the idea that now she needs to defend Joel from anything vaguely resembling shit-talking. Ellie doesn’t have a lot of time for the sudden loyalty. “I know, I know. Whatever. It’s just fucking weird. Like, Joel isn’t supposed to be in touch with anyone’s emotions. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?”

Ellie’s going to regret this tomorrow. A side-effect of waking up at what Joel calls a ‘respectable hour’ is that she’s actually getting sleepy around midnight, and tired Ellie is not quite as in touch with the things she doesn’t want to speak about.

“His entire identity is basically a recipe for being emotionless. He's ex-military. And old, too.” Ellie considers. “Like, people in his demographic are supposed to be real assholes about ‘talking’, but Joel is all like ‘Ellie, discuss your inner truths and go outside for your mental health while I book an aura reading’ and all that bullshit. It doesn’t add up, man.”

Tess is quiet for way longer than she needs to be, enough that Ellie’s finished her soda and feels almost ready to give up the whole discussion and go to bed. Joel said that tomorrow if Ellie didn’t complain a single time before breakfast, he would let her show him the first episode of Ryan Murphy’s Glee, so she’s kind of stoked. Whether she told him it was a trashy horror movie or not is her business- and it’s really Joel’s fault for being that uninformed about pop culture.

“I’m not gonna tell you all Joel’s business, kid, but plenty of ex-military people go to therapy. I did, and so did Tommy, and-”

“-And Joel? In therapy ?” Ellie frowns, drawn back to the topic at hand. She can’t picture Joel in anything close to a therapist’s office, talking about- well, whatever’s made him so addicted to torturing her with mild exercise, for starters. “For how long? Is he still going now?”

“Ain’t our business,” Tess says, in a way that really means ain’t your business. Ellie glares at her lap. “You know, you could always ask him yourself.”

“Or I could go full Sylvia Plath and-”

“Looks like that’s the end of this talk. Go to bed.” Tess interrupts briskly, but she’s smirking when Ellie looks up so it’s not a situation where she needs to be worried about another Talk. Thank fuck for that. Joel is one thing- Ellie’s slightly beyond wanting to look cool in front of him, even if she’s holding on to the final shreds of good reputation as tightly as she can- but Tess is different. Where Ellie wants the woman to be impressed because she wants Tess to like her, she really just wants to impress Joel because-

Well. 

She’s going to keep ironing out the details on that one. Ellie’s not oblivious to some potential explanations for Joel Stuff, but she’s not some all-knowing deity and she doesn’t plan on trying to become one until she’s turned fifteen.

* * *

“You’re quiet today.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking exhausted from the physical labour you’re forcing me to do.”

“What did I say about complaining?”

“‘Don’t do it’?”
“Uh-huh.”

“But that was really more a statement of fact. I am fucking exhausted, dude.”

“I asked you to jog for five minutes, kid- and you didn’t even do that.” Joel says, unimpressed. Ellie scuffs the rubber toes of her sneakers into the ground as they head towards the White House’s cinema, purposefully flecking dirt onto the backs of Joel’s pants until he pulls her up beside him again. “I’m not even sure I should be letting you slack off today, if that’s how unfit you are.”

Unfit isn’t fair, Ellie thinks. She could’ve run further, only it was much more fun to climb a tree and wait for Joel to come looking for her before she jumped down and tackled him. “Well you know what, dickhead? Mesa so hurt by-”
“No Jar-Jar.” Joel practically growls, expression darkening.

“Tommy’s fault! He’s the one who told me to watch the prequels.”

“Tommy’s an asshole.” Joel mutters. 

“You would say that about your own baby brother?” Ellie puts a hand to her heart. “I’m shocked. Heartbroken. Dismayed. What has happened to the family unit in President Williams’ America? Horr-”

He cuts her off with a peeved look and bends down as they reach the edge of the building, where he’s left Ellie’s drink-bottle and a black plastic bag that he hands to her. “Here.”

“Is it drugs?” Ellie jokes, regretting it immediately when something twists against her ribcage. She takes the bag, feeling something solid and rectangular inside. 

“No.” Joel replies. Ellie reaches into the bag, brow furrowed, and her suspicion is correct- it is a book. Heavy enough that she needs both hands to hold it, it’s the type of thing she’s seen people keep on glass coffee tables in nicer foster homes, never to be touched or opened by tiny, grubby hands. Space Atlas is printed across the front cover. Ellie stares. 

“What is this?” Her voice sounds weird. Joel clearly thinks so, too, because he takes the plastic bag and her drink-bottle more carefully than he usually might. 

“Book about space. Photos, facts, that sorta thing. You have it already?”

Ellie shakes her head, still staring at the book. It doesn’t make sense. “How you- what?”

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t seem sure what the question is, and doesn’t answer. 

“Joel.” She looks up for the first time, and finds her eyes pulled back down to the glossy front cover as if drawn there by magnets. Her stomach feels empty in an uncomfortable way entirely unrelated to hunger. “Joel.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Is this from you?”

“...Sure is. You’re welcome.”

“Why?”

“Friend of mine is moving out of his place, gettin’ rid of some old stuff he doesn’t need. Look, Ellie, if you don’t like it-”
“No!” Ellie snatches the book back as Joel reaches for it, so quickly that she hits herself in the chest. “Fuck. Ouch. Why did you give it to me?”

“You like space.”

Joel is frowning like he doesn’t understand, which should absolutely be Ellie’s fucking job right now. Joel is supposed to get her things like breakfast, or tracker phones, or water if he’s forcing her to exercise. Not tablets to contact her friends and meaningful books about shit that Ellie actually fucking likes. 

He’s not meant to do it, and it feels like being known, which causes a simultaneous rush of feeling like a terrible person because Joel doesn’t know Ellie like he thinks he does or he would know that she does actually think about dying and not in a ‘hope that doesn’t happen to me’ sort of way, and she’s keeping several little pills on a shelf that seems to have the same magnetic pull as this fucking book does. 

“Thanks.” She says. Joel is looking at her strangely, but he just nods and they walk inside, the book clutched tightly against her stomach.

* * *

Surprising absolutely nobody, Joel Miller hates Glee with a passion. No amount of internal conflict about the weight of her new book on Ellie’s lap can trump the delight that she feels within the first episode, watching Joel try to choose between glaring at the TV or at her. 

“What the hell is this, Ellie?” Is his refrain throughout all forty-eight minutes, with varying levels of devastation and anger. Sometimes he spices it up by asking what the fuck it is instead of just what the hell, but either way Ellie wishes she’d brought a camera. 

When it ends, she turns cheerfully to Joel, who is sitting stiffly in his seat beside her and scowling at the closing credits. “...So, episode two?”
“Ellie.” He says dangerously. 

“It’s called ‘showmance’, and if you remember that one blonde cheerleader-”

“Ellie.” Joel interrupts. “You told me this was a horror movie.”

“And aren’t you horrified?”

“I- not for the right reasons, you little shit. The fuck are you trying to do to me here?”

“Educate you!” Ellie darts away as Joel swipes in her direction, using the book as a shield. “C’mon, Joel, you know you loved it deep down. Don’t stop believing, am I right?” 

“I’ll make you stop believing, fuckin’-” Joel bats away a beanbag as Ellie tosses it in his direction, trying to act like he’s not joking a little bit. “You want to try that again?” 

“Despite my confidence that you would react with restraint and kindness,” Ellie says sweetly, “I’m good.” 

Joel is pretend-grumpy for the rest of the day, especially when they discover that her self-defence instructor has gone home for a family emergency. Ellie suspects that her request to skip the session and enjoy her new book instead would’ve been met with more tolerance had she not forced Joel to watch a group of high school misfits sing a Journey song- instead, he decides to take the session himself. Big mistake.

“You need to be moving on the balls of your feet, Ellie.” He says frustratedly, half an hour in. “Focus.”

“Ha, balls.” She replies, and is met with a glare that could make someone start praying for their life. Ellie winces and gets into a ‘ready’ position, knees bent and hands up. 

He takes a loose swipe at her, and Ellie dodges it easily. “Good,” He says. She huffs.

“You’re going easy.”

“Yep.”

“Well, why?”

“You’re not very good at this.” 

Ellie stands up straight, looking as offended as she can. “What’s up your ass, man? I’m fine at this. I’m like, ready for battle.” 

“Nothin’s ‘up my ass’.” Joel huffs. “You’re not focusing, Ellie. This is important.”

“Really? I thought we were just fucking around until I learned to throw a punch.”

“You already know how to throw a damn punch.” Joel’s glare becomes less weary and more irritated. Ellie takes a step backwards, and the heat rushes out of his gaze with the next exhale. “We have twenty-five minutes left. Then you can read your book.”

“You make it sound like I’m a little kid.”

Joel hums, uninterested in that line of conversation. Ellie can already imagine him saying stop actin’ like one, so any response would’ve been nullified anyway. “Hands up, kiddo. C’mon.”

Ellie raises her arms straight above her head, but drops them at the Look Joel gives her. “You’re no fun.” She grumbles. Joel seems to take it as a compliment. Ellie aims a clumsy kick at his knees and he steps back easily, beckoning her to follow his footwork with one hand. 

“Be faster.”

“Duh.”

She tries again, this time pulling away from an attempt to grab her wrists and dancing around Joel’s back. “What are the chances I can strangle you if I jump onto your back?”

“Zero. No, Ellie -”
Without giving Joel more time to be a total Debbie Downer, Ellie takes hold of his shoulders and jumps as high as she can onto his back. Her knees wrap easily around the sides of his stomach, but she can’t get a good grip on Joel’s neck before he’s grabbing her right forearm and dragging her easily over the top of him.

“What the fuck?” She grunts, landing hard on her back where he drops her. 

“Get your hands to my face or ‘round my neck, then get your footing. That was too easy. Shouldn’t be jumpin’ up on me anyway.”

“I can’t hear you over the brain damage you just gave me.” Ellie pants, “And I wasn’t actually gonna strangle you, was I? I could’ve done it if I was actually in danger.”

“Fuckin’ hope not, kiddo. If you’re ‘actually in danger’, what would you do first?”
Ellie rests her head back on the floor, clearing her throat dramatically. “Let you do the hard work and fuck off to somewhere safe until you say I can come out. If you’re not within five feet of me for the first time ever, yell as-”

“That’s right, but I meant if you’re actually fightin’ with them.”

It’s an effort not to look embarrassed, regretting how eager she’d been to please him despite her bored tone. Ellie sits up. “Oh, got it. Uh, you said to always go for the eyes first, and kick ‘em in the dick if it’s a dude.” Joel nods. “I can bite through fingers, rip ears, whatever. Just gotta distract them from hurting me by making them hurt more.”

“Attagirl. C’mon.” Joel holds out a hand, and Ellie uses it to haul herself up. The praise is warming, though even that feels complicated if she thinks about it for more than five seconds. “Tess said you were up late last night. You tired?”

“No. I was barely up past midnight, anyway.” 

He clearly disapproves. “You can get some rest upstairs, and I want you asleep earlier tonight. You’ve got Frank tomorrow.”

Ellie heads for the door before he can change his mind, picking up her book on the way and throwing a sarcastic eye-roll over her shoulder. “Well shit, Joel, how do you expect me to sleep after that? It’s like Christmas came early.”

***

Where the sessions with Frank predictably suck major ass, the rest of Ellie’s July is actually kind of fine. Privately, she spends hours reading and rereading the book Joel gave her, memorising everything she can and copying a map of the Sagittarius constellation alongside Aquarius on her ceiling. He’s unexpectedly cool about the permanent marker Ellie’s used on white paint, but he is much less okay with her method- a chair balanced on top of her bed. It takes some serious grovelling to escape more than half an hour of lecturing. 

It’s sappy bullshit, but Ellie thinks it’s worth the push-ups she earns to see her and Riley beside one another when she lies awake in bed that night. She doesn’t even believe in that astrology shit- Riley’s the one who went through a whole phase when she was fifteen.

Something that is decidedly less worth push-ups is the photoshopped image of Joel’s face onto Sue Sylvester’s body that Ellie puts together. It took her fucking ages to actually take the picture, since her iPad is a little big to be subtle with and Joel confiscated the charger the single time he caught her taking a photo of him, but she’d thought it would make a funny poster for her walls. The Coach Carter level of exercise she’s forced to do as penance for her wrongdoing feels like a war crime- if Ellie didn’t hate lawyers, she’d want one to be permanently negotiating exactly how many reps are appropriate for a harmless photoshopping prank. Ellie is choosing to ignore the fact that apparently it came with several days’ worth of ‘bad attitude’. 

August brings rain and air that feels too thick in Ellie’s nose and mouth. It’s still warm, the kind of humidity that would have Riley and Ellie sneaking down to the Kwongs’ kitchen just to take turns sitting in the crisp cold of the fridge. Since she was little, Ellie’s hated the clammy feeling, the frizz in her hair, and it’s worse now that she’s doing it by herself. 

It’s getting closer, she’s reminded. The second of October, permanently etched into a silver plaque on a park bench it’s getting harder to look at. The date feels startling, even as it plagues Ellie’s thoughts- it’s too early, still too painful to have almost been a year. Frank won’t give her a straight answer on what a normal timespan looks like. Ellie can’t figure out how to tell him that it’s not so she can hold herself to any dumb standards, it’s just to get a ballpark for how many more mornings getting out of bed will feel like a physical pain. 

For a few weeks, Joel is more understanding than Ellie deserves. He keeps taking her outside when it’s sunny, or watching shitty action movies when it isn’t, and he even (bravely) tastes Ellie’s improvised sourdough loaf (Théo bans her from the kitchens for the rest of the year). He’s gentler when Ellie silently wants him to be- not so much when she’s irritable and too warm and hating everything, but always when Ellie can’t shut her eyes without seeing Riley or feels so on-edge that she flinches whenever Joel moves. He can see those days coming before she does, like he’s deciphered a pattern to Ellie’s mind that she can’t figure out herself. It’s simultaneously maddening and very convenient for Ellie’s sake; knowing that Joel knows her well enough to choose a morning spent drawing unflattering pictures of her father and his family rather than a self-defence class, but not well enough to ask how much she wishes she were dead today. 

Realistically, she can’t be mad at the guy. She lied to him on purpose so that she could avoid him ever knowing her innermost thoughts, the things she considers and decides she’s going to do until doubts interrupt it. Joel doesn’t know any of it- if Ellie was really feeling the way she tells him she is, just kinda in a shitty mood or on my fucking period, fuck off his reactions would be pretty great. She has to excuse herself to go rip up some paper towels out of pure guilt and frustration when arrives one morning with pads, chocolate, and a heating pack for her ‘cramps’. 

But it isn’t real. She’s building lies on fucking lies, here. Firstly, Ellie’s period doesn’t arrive in July or August, which is potentially a result of how much time she spends stressing over stupid things like authentically faking her period to her very observant bodyguard who apparently knows more about the female cycle than she does. Secondly, ‘just kinda in a shitty mood’ doesn’t really cover any of the truth. Because she’s apparently becoming a total masochist, Ellie spends afternoons trying to imagine how she could tell Joel everything, and how he’d react. She imagines him scoffing at her, exploding into anger because she’s proven that he can’t trust her, or just leaving because while he can deal with a slightly depressed teenager, a suicidal one who keeps a few hard drugs on standby is just too much. On days when Ellie’s feeling kinder, she imagines Joel cupping her face in his stupid big hands and telling her that he doesn’t know what she’s so upset about, that all this is normal when you’re almost fifteen. Those scenarios are impossible to imagine with any audio; Ellie can’t really conceptualise how his voice would sound, saying those words. 

The worst is when she’s sure he’ll be indifferent. It’s blatantly made-up, and they’ve had this conversation so she shouldn’t be so fucking afraid that Joel doesn’t care whether she wants to be alive or not. It’s pointless to think about. But as the leaves start browning and the smell of hot concrete stays with Ellie for minutes each night after she jolts awake, she’s sure she can feel the distance expanding again. It’s her own fault- she’s quieter, maybe. She has a shitty attitude about everything, and won’t even relent when Joel offers a visit to the park because her brain decides, completely of its own volition, that the one place she’s tried to preserve as separate from all the bad shit at home and with Riley is suddenly nausea-inducing. Ellie spends an afternoon bent over the toilet, alternating between hating herself for the hours of faking illness and the hours spent actually feeling sick at the thought of the bench and the tree and the hole in the fucking tree. Joel rubs her back through it, and Ellie pretends she can’t stand the gesture at all. It’s just too much. 

Things were supposed to be better once they’d talked, but all Ellie can do is nitpick the tiny fucking lies she told to save herself and Joel from a world of pain. For a while, she doesn’t tell Joel because it still feels like a punishment for the terrible way she acted down at the lake, and then it turns into a sort of comfort zone of feeling low all the time, and Ellie doesn’t think she has the energy for whatever plan Joel might concoct to pull her out of this. Adhering to minimal exercise and eating is already about as exhausting as swimming through concrete, and there are moments- days, even- when Ellie thinks the only relief from being so fucking tired would be to sink even lower. Like, at Riley’s funeral, the pain of seeing her coffin descend slowly into the ground was fresh, open, spilling emotion like blood instead of the stale sort of infection that it had been to know her body was dead and still in the same room as Ellie. And it was a relief, or felt like it. Being in a grave meant that Ellie had permission to grieve Riley, to let her go, and at the time that had seemed like something which would pass quickly. A release. Ellie wants- needs- to sink down into something final instead of existing in a fucking liminal space where she can’t breathe properly, the same way Riley did. 

Chapter Text

Much later, Ellie will wonder if it was all her half-hearted prayers for something, anything to change that did it. It’ll feel like she wished this upon herself, with all her obsessing over secrets and truth and trust. Maybe it is her own fault; it’s hard to be sure either way, and there won’t be anyone to put a stop to that line of thought. Not when it matters. 

* * *

It’s been a long time since Ellie felt so numb. Riley always said that her issue was that she was too angry, cared too much, especially for someone who couldn’t always win a fight. Or- fine, ever win a fight. Foster-kid-Ellie didn’t have self defence classes on a weekly basis to boost her combat skills. Either way, she was always getting herself into trouble because she got offended, got snarky, got violent. She couldn’t stop feeling, she’d lamented. That was, until Riley had disappeared over several days for the first time, and between badgering the local police for information and searching sketchy suburbs herself, Ellie had felt a level of insensibility to the world settle into her chest.

That weekend was the first time she’d stopped looking both ways when she crossed the street. A part of her, the stupidest part, thought that it might take near-death to summon her friend just in time to save Ellie’s life. Another part knew that something worse than near-death wouldn’t matter anyway, if Riley was really gone. They were easy facts to balance, at the time. Hoping to die if she didn’t have her person, her Riley, to live for. It was so simple. 

The numbness extended to other parts of her life even after Riley came home, wearing long sleeves even though she’d always said she hated them just to cover up bruised inner elbows. Suddenly it wasn’t dying so much as being hurt, bullied, yelled at, that didn’t matter to Ellie. She got a mild concussion because she walked right through a game of football between some of the boys in the home. She’d remained silent at the dinner table and watched as Bethany tipped a bowl of steaming hot soup into Ellie’s lap, burning her thighs. She let herself be caught out of her room after lights-out and served a week without heating as punishment. All of it, and Ellie barely felt a thing. 

There are moments more recently that Ellie can’t remember how she usually reacts to things, the comments she’d typically make, and it feels like her entire personality has slipped into some dark corner of the house where she’ll never find it. She’s constantly got this feeling like she’s put something down for five seconds, and turned to realise that she’s totally blotted out where it is. It’s one thing to lose energy, to only manage half-hearted sarcasm and to let herself be treated like shit without needing to yell about it, but it’s completely different to feel like she doesn’t even really exist anymore. 

Joel takes Ellie’s tablet because he thinks it’s the reason she’s acting so oddly, and she can’t summon a single note of indignance. He stands in silence and waits for her to argue, and Ellie has to watch his face sink towards disappointment while she fumbles for what she would normally say. She doesn’t want to fight with him, and risk feeling emptier than this, but nothing kind or funny or good-natured fits in her mouth any more comfortably.

“You’re really not fighting me on this?” He comments, pointedly pulling Ellie’s laundry basket out of its home in her closet. He thinks that changing clothes will help her to feel better from the headache she’s claimed this morning. He also thinks she smells, but he’s not going to say that.

“You’re in charge.” Ellie says. The effort it takes to insert any actual tone into her voice is surprising.
“Right.” Joel nods distractedly. He’s been off this morning, focused on something other than Ellie. She might not remember her own habits, but she knows it’s unusual for Joel not to pay attention to her. “Ain’t like you to give it up lyin’ down, though.”
“You told me to keep lying down if my head-”

“Not what I meant.” Joel sighs. Ellie tries to think of a biting, witty comment. She feels like she’s disappointing Joel by not being a dick, the way his face falls. “Take the meds I gave you, kiddo. With water.”

Ellie pauses halfway to dry-swallowing the pain medication and does as he says. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Don’t need to apologise.” Joel responds immediately, fussing with her AC and tossing the few dirty clothes on Ellie’s floor into the laundry basket until he doesn’t have an excuse for sticking around anymore. “You have enough water?”

Ellie glances at the nearly-full cup on her bedside table. “Um. Yep.”

“Good.” He nods to himself. “You feel warm?”

“Nope.”

“You tell me if anythin’ changes. I can-”
“Joel.” Ellie manages to prop herself up on both elbows. “It’s just a headache.”
“Ain’t ‘just a headache’, kiddo, you’ve been more sick the past few weeks than you were in the first four months I knew you. You anxious ‘bout somethin’?”
If only. Anxiety would be better than this, Ellie thinks. She’s sure she’d disagree with herself if it was panic attacks rather than achy joints. “No.”

“Alright. I’ll let you get some rest.”

He does, which is unusual given his habit of over-explaining what Ellie should and shouldn’t do in her current state. There’s always a list- even on days when she’s 100% healthy, there’s a fucking list.

Her blankets feel scratchy. She’s too warm, then too cold when she kicks them off her legs. Not a good day, then.

It takes a week of not-good days, hidden under the pretence of a head cold, for Ellie to start feeling slightly unnerved by Joel’s similar not-himself-ness. Sure, she’s feeling shitty and absent and blank, but he’s acting like he hasn’t even noticed. It’s almost enough to actually pull Ellie from her feigned illness.

The comfort of being allowed to wade in and out of bad and worse thoughts, with little more than his regular mandate of regular showers, meals, and time in the sunlight of her not-bedroom’s open window, has lost its charm. It feels insane that Joel hasn’t forced her to go outside, at least on a walk. He says there’s been an upset with Ellie’s father and there are more press than usual- some with drone cameras- so they should steer clear of their usual spots in the gardens. Ellie’s not sure how to tell him that none of the journalists will give a shit about her in that case, and they’ll probably assume she’s a poorly dressed gardener. Wouldn't be the first time.
Still, his odd behaviour is somewhat distracting from everything else, and on the first day of fall Ellie decides it’s time to figure him out, which she can’t do from her bed. 

“I want to go somewhere.” She tells Joel. He’s careful not to show her how surprised he is that she’s appeared outside her room, but the man is obvious as shit. “It’s probably gonna get cold in a couple of days, and I need to work on my tan before then.”

He flicks his eyes upwards, exhaling heavily. It would be a normal Joel reaction if he’d looked at her once- and he’s the one who’s usually such a stickler for eye contact. “We ain’t goin’ outside, if that’s what you mean.”

“But what about Miami Swim Week? They want me on every runway this year.”

“They’ll have to live without that experience. C’mon, then,” Joel pats her shoulder, and Ellie walks past him. She can feel the weakness of a few days in bed settled uncomfortably in her muscles, and whatever mental clarity she’s been gifted with immediately shames her for it. “Were you thinkin’ of swimming, or-”
“I dunno. Hadn’t written an itinerary, that’s your job.” Ellie glances over her shoulder, and Joel pretends to glare at her while he’s actually looking just above her head.
“Nice, kid.”

“Just trying to get bang for my dad’s buck, Joel. What are we paying you for, if not driving me out of my fucking mind with to-the-second planning?” She says, trying to insert some of her usual energy into her tone. Joel would usually object to that phrasing, but he doesn’t say anything, so Ellie fills the gap. “I just wanna walk around a bit. Feels like I’m getting muscular dystrophy.”

“You’re not gettin’-”

“I could be, you just would never know because you’re a non-believer.”

“Non-believer.” Joel repeats from behind her. Ellie’s determined not to be too pleased that he’s finally tuned it. “Believed you fakin’ sick for a week, didn’t I?”

Oh, shit. 

She stops walking at the top of the stairs and faces him, searching his face for anger or disappointment or anything to suggest she’s in trouble. She’s diverted by the shock of Joel’s dark eyes fixed sternly on hers, and she forgets to think clearly. “What?” She says, way too late.

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Perks of having that door open, kid? I could hear that all the damn snifflin’ stopped the minute I was out of sight.”

“Maybe I’m allergic to you.” He lifts one eyebrow, and Ellie’s reminded that she’s not in a position to be making dumb comments. “I- okay, fucking-” She puffs out her cheeks, staring at a spot on the carpet between them. “What do you want me to say?”

“You could start by tellin’ me why you made it up.”

“I dunno.” Ellie frowns. “Wait. Okay, this is kinda bullshit, Joel-”

“Oh, it’s ‘kinda bullshit’? Not a great start, kiddo.”

“Shut up. Why the fuck didn’t you call me out on it sooner?” She crosses her arms. “When have you ever let me get away with something like that?” 

Joel rubs his jaw, looking away. “Figured you needed a break.”

“Bullshit. ‘A break’?” Why are you lying?

Instead of adhering to Ellie’s mind-power question, Joel gets pissed for no reason. “Ellie, drop it. If I’m letting you get away with it, take the win.”

“I wasn’t-” 

“You tryin’ to argue your way into trouble?”

“No, but I-”

“Enough.” Joel glares, a real one, and Ellie shuts her mouth. They walk on. 

“I’m sorry,” Ellie says, a long while later. It’s taken a good thirty minutes of effort to force out the words, punctuated by rejected proposals to go outside. Joel’s expression softens immediately. The blue light of the indoor pool has changed his whole face, but Ellie doesn’t think he’ll get the Avatar reference if she brings it up.

“That’s alright.”

“Not really. I-”

“Hey.” Joel interrupts firmly, properly like himself for the first time. It’s almost a relief. “I mean it. It’s fine, Ellie.”

“You-” She hesitates, reluctant to undo whatever improved mood she’s just earned. “You gave me painkillers, even though you knew I wasn’t sick. Isn’t that meant to be bad?” Hypocrite, a little voice snarls. Since when do you care if drugs are bad for you?

“I didn’t give you painkillers.” Joel says mildly. She frowns up at him, pulling her feet up onto the edge of the pool. “You remember how I told you the mint flavour was just to make ‘em easier to swallow?”

“Yeah.”

“That ain’t a real thing.”

“But then what-” Ellie suddenly feels a little (a lot) more stupid, eyes widening. “You were giving me breath mints ?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t think it would hurt you.”

“Maybe not physically,” She mutters. “You’re giving me trust issues.” That part is only a little bit true. Joel swallows and his eyes flit over to the opposite wall- there’s something he’s not saying . 

Ellie doesn’t want to think about that, so she jumps into the pool fully clothed. She can’t repress the dread creeping closer when Joel barely reacts. 

Things have changed. Ellie sees it, feels it, and it’s not welcome. 

Joel, despite his near-constant insistence on walks and self-defence training (now with a new instructor- Henry), has pulled back. Ellie’s not sure why it happened; any argument seems too inconsequential, any rude comments have been of the standard calibre. And he’s not completely cold, either. Not the way she remembers him being when things were really bad between them.

It’s not as if she’s some fucking Sherlock Holmes, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that Joel actively seeks out opportunities to avoid her in the three days after Ellie gets better from her fabricated illness. Whenever they’re walking alone, or she starts asking some very subtle questions about what the fuck is wrong with him, he immediately suggests seeing Tommy or going to the park (abso-fucking-lutely not ) or even talking to Marlene. (Her refusal to the last one seems to actually piss him off, insanely, but it’s not her fault that Marlene has only ever been a total dick to her). If a joke lands with Joel now, it feels about as miraculous as that plane on the Hudson. 

Ellie tries to feel numb about this the way she’s been able to about most other things, but it’s incredibly difficult when Joel is right there, with his own vacant expression to rival hers and clear avoidance of any opportunity to speak to her. He’s stiff and awkward, and the only times Ellie really thinks he seems at all normal are when he’s arguing with Tess in the five-minute crossover between their shifts. She doesn’t dare to ask about that; not after the way she already fucked with their relationship.

It’s not until the humidity hanging low across the White House lawn breaks, that Ellie starts to think something outside of just her-and-Joel might be off-kilter.

The air is blue when she looks out the window of her formal, starch-scented room. For a second, it’s like her shoulders lift and her muscles don’t ache and she feels the breeze tickling the sweaty baby hairs around her neck and suddenly, she really thinks things are a little better. Relief, like a condensation-covered can of cold soda on a hot day. Then she’s reminded of why she came out here; the low murmur of Tess and Joel’s argument outside. The feeling fades.

Ellie waits for a stronger breath of wind to push the trees all together, a rush of sound, before she pads across the last of the carpet. It’s nice to be that quiet, she thinks. There are times she’s only able to think about how fucking loud she is, how she can’t ever stop her goddamn talking - a thought that appears in a voice that sounds like Joel’s, only angrier- and it’s a kind of peace to move so silently that she gets a break from herself. Maybe that’s a stupid thought. She thinks it anyway.

“-the fuck are you doing, Joel?” Tess’ voice becomes clearer as Ellie squats slowly, carefully, by the ajar door. 

“I’m protectin’ her, Tess. That’s all we ever fucken’ do.” Joel says. Ellie’s noticed that his southern accent is more pronounced when he speaks to Tommy and Tess, though the latter is hardly from the same place. Something about Detroit springs to mind. “You think this is easy for me?”

“Seems easier than it should be. ”

There’s a short pause. Ellie’s sure they’re talking about her, and there’s a note of satisfaction at finally hearing one of these conversations that she’d spent so long obsessing over. Then she’s not sure if that’s what she really wanted, or why she wanted it, and she’s almost lost in a spiral of not knowing herself until Joel’s voice pulls her out of it.

He’s quieter, though not at all softer. “I’m doing my job. I’m keepin’ that kid safe, and happy, and-”

“Yeah, she seems fucking happy, Joel-”

“You think this shit would help with that?”

Tess breathes slowly in and out while Ellie twists the woollen fibres of her carpet between two fingers, tighter and tighter until it hurts her skin. “She’d want to hear it from you. You know that’s the fucking truth, so give up this whole ‘ignorance is bliss’ act and tell me that the best thing for your k-” Tess stumbles over the phrase, and Ellie hears Joel draw in a sharp breath- “That this kid is really going to be okay hearing this from Seth fucking Brown instead of you.”

Hearing what? Hearing what? 

Ellie blinks quickly, confused. What could be so bad that her father’s PR manager would ever need to speak to her about it? He’s never given enough of a shit to inform Ellie about anything to do with his politics (or personal life, for that matter). She’s never given enough of a shit to ask. None of it makes any sense. 

“It’s not my place.”

“‘Not your place’- not your place, Joel?” Tess has never been this mad, not out loud. “Whose place is it? What- her father? You’re leaving this to that asshole ?”

“Not him,” Joel says immediately. “Marlene could-”

“Marlene.” She scoffs over the top of the name, and Ellie hears her footsteps as she walks to the nearest wall of the hallway and back again. “Yeah, sure, Joel. Fuck that.”

Another silence, while Ellie chases the wave of indifference that had covered her in bed just moments ago. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to hear this if she can’t know what it all means, and suddenly she can’t dissolve it into the murky mass of everything else either. It’s a jolting feeling, like jumping into the shallow end of the pool and finding solid tile suddenly beneath her bare feet. Nowhere to hide, she thinks, even if the deep end of nothingness hasn’t really felt so safe recently. It doesn’t add up; Ellie’s been waiting for this ascent into feeling, so why will her mind only let her up for air if it’s to experience this?

Tess breaks the thin silence. “She’s not stupid. It’s all over the news- you think she won’t see the hundreds of journalists posted outside the White House? Ellie’ll figure it out.”

She wants to wrench the door open and demand an explanation, and she wants to jolt awake with the realisation that this was just some weird dream, and she wants Joel to trust her with whatever’s this important. What would the real Ellie do?

It’s so fucking dumb. She’s the real Ellie, she should know what she wants to do. 

“I have to go,” Joel is saying. 

“ Tell her ,” Tess insists by way of a farewell. 

Ellie sits on the edge of her bed and waits for Joel to come in and tell her what’s wrong for half the morning, but he doesn’t even wake her when the clock ticks past eleven. She wonders if he’s taken a sick day (outlandish) or been abducted by aliens (more plausible), but when she goes looking he’s just standing in the hallway. It’s disappointing in a way that Ellie wishes was more complicated, but it’s really just that she’s come to expect him to check on her and today he didn’t bother. She wishes he did. 

“Hey, Joel.” She says. He looks down at her.

“Hey, kid.” 

“...So, are-”

“Do you know who Seth Brown is?”

No, Ellie thinks, dread oozing down between her lungs and ribs. Please don’t let him tell me whatever this is. Please tell me, listen to Tess. 

“My dad’s PR manager?” She tries to sound confused, and she is, but not in the way Joel thinks. She wishes she could beg for him to tell her what the matter is without knowing that she’ll be shut down. Joel looks guilty- he’s not supposed to, and it seems all wrong on his face. 

She wonders if he would tell her if she got hurt, if she gave him a reason to sit down with her and really talk. The first time Joel and Ellie ever had a Big Conversation, one that mattered, he was fixing her up after her father hit her. Is that the only time she can force something out of him? 

Joel can have a conversation with Ellie whenever he wants, she thinks. He can sit down and say we need to have ourselves a talk, and she’ll just have to do it because he’s the adult here. But it’s not a two-way street, and suddenly Ellie’s convinced that the only way to make Joel tell her something is to make him feel sorry enough for her that he gives information as a pity-gift.

“That’s him.” Joel says. “He asked to see you- one o’clock, today. That alright?”

No, it’s not fucking alright, and you know it isn’t because Tess told you it wouldn’t be and she’s never fucking wrong and she knows and you know something that’s going to hurt me so why won’t you fucking tell me if you really do give a single shit-

“Yeah, whatever.” Ellie shrugs, then, “What’s it about?” She hopes Joel doesn’t notice how her voice wavers on the final word. There’s no indication that he does, which feels disappointing in itself.

“Some press release, I don’t know.” 

Joel lies too easily, Ellie thinks. 

“Cool.”

“Eat some breakfast before your self-defence class,” Joel says absently, turning to face the hallway again. 

Henry’s a nice guy, in a good way. He treats Ellie like an adult (mostly), and talks to her about TV shows that they’ve both seen, and he has a younger brother who’s into the same comics as Ellie- although she pretends that she’s way past liking them now that she’s almost fifteen. He’s almost a potential friend. That’s why it sucks that she has to do this.

Joel has been watching her sessions with Henry since he gave up the self-defence gig himself. It’s made her want to do better, be faster, when she finally gets to the sparring part of the lesson- the promise of some kind of compliment, or an approving nod after she nails a new move, has always been enough motivation to keep her going through the heaviest of mental fogs. Today, he hardly lifts an eyebrow when she escapes a vice-like headlock and gets her instructor to the ground. 

“Nice one,” Henry says. It’s embarrassing how pitying he sounds, watching her glance over at Joel for some fucking stamp of approval. Ellie sets her jaw and nods. 

“Can we try some of those blocking moves from a couple weeks ago?”

“Sure.” He agrees easily. Ellie was good at those, and Henry said he was barely even holding back, which is perfect. 

They start off easy, with his punches and grabs coming softer while Ellie gets used to the movements and he offers feedback on her footwork, her posture, her stance. When Henry sees that she’s focused, he starts hitting harder, letting her feel the impact of an undodged hit against her hands and forearms as she continues to defend herself.

“That’s great. Stay on your toes.” Henry says. Ellie nods.

She counts down from twenty. There are a few jabs at her side that she blocks or dodges, a kick aimed at the side of her legs, a couple of straight hits that she retaliates against. There’s a pattern to it, and Henry’s easy to read on purpose. His mistake. 

When she reaches zero, Ellie drops her arms at the last second and fakes a slip, letting Henry’s fist collide directly against her nose. It should’ve been easy for her to dodge, if she’d planned to do so, and he wasn’t holding back. Her head is jerked backwards. Her vision spots. She’s oddly reminded of the sound Alistair Gusler’s face made when she hit him at that dinner party, and behind the splintering pain in her own face, she’s satisfied to have made him feel this.

“Oh, fuck!” Henry says distantly, dropping beside Ellie while she covers her nose with both hands. A hot, metallic taste fills her mouth when she opens it, eyes watering non-stop. “Shit, Ellie, I’m sorry. Let me grab my first-aid-”

“Ellie,” Joel practically skids into Ellie, his knees clicking as he hits the ground beside her and cups the back of her head with one hand. “The hell were you thinkin’?”

It takes Ellie a moment to realise he’s speaking to her and not Henry, which feels a little unfair when she’s just had her nose practically inverted into her face. 

“What?” She says dumbly, feeling blood dripping through the gaps between her fingers. 

“Goddamn, girl, just- let me see.” Joel peels her hands away and squints at her nose, frown lines deeper than ever. Henry’s disappeared. Ellie wonders if he’s fleeing the country, and feels a pang of guilt in her gut.

“Wasn’t Henry’s fault,” She says in a thick, nasal voice. “Don’t kill him with your gun.” Joel tuts and pulls a handkerchief out of nowhere, dabbing around Ellie’s mouth and chin. The fabric comes away crimson, and he closes her sweaty hand around it.

“Hold that against your nostrils, there you go.” He orders, sighing. “You’re damn right it wasn’t his fault. I saw you lean into that goddamn punch like you wanted him to break your nose, kid. What the fuck were you tryin’ to do?”

Ellie closes her eyes, a bit woozy, and tries unsuccessfully not to lean too much on Joel’s hand where it supports her head. “Look tougher. Battle scars.”

“ Christ , Ellie.” His voice fades again, a little more distant. Ellie focuses as hard as she can. He’s talking to Henry. “-her own doin’, I don’t know what she’s- yeah, it’s alright. I got ‘er, you fill out that paperwork and pull your damn punches from now on.” 

“Yes, sir.” Henry says nervously, and then he’s gone again. Joel sits Ellie up and uses some wipes from the first aid kit to clean the blood off her hands like she’s the same little kid who could never eat her dinner without spilling food all over herself. She broke that habit a long time ago- if you’re already being punished with food restrictions, you don’t exactly want to waste any of the stuff you actually get.

“Let me see.” He instructs, examining Ellie’s nose again when she obeys and wiping away some more blood. “Goddamn stupid,” Joel mutters.

“Will I live?”

He glares at her. His hands are still on the back of her neck and her chin, tilting her face up to look at him. “Not if you keep makin’ stupid decisions like that, kiddo.”

This isn’t quite as gentle as Ellie remembers him being when her dad hit her. “It hurts.” She tries, in a pitiful voice.

“I bet.”

“It feels broken.”
“The fuck did you expect, huh?” She must look more upset at that- and she is- because Joel’s expression softens and he shakes her chin a little before letting go. “Why’d you let him land that hit?”

“Lost focus.” Ellie tries.

Joel lifts an eyebrow. “Come up with somethin’ better. You were plenty focused the rest of the time.”

Ellie huffs and grimaces when her nose starts bleeding a bit more. She wipes it clean herself, this time. Just be honest. “...I wanted you to tell me what’s up.”

“You mean, aside from you-”

“Aside from me getting the shit beat outta me, which was dumb, yeah.” Ellie says impatiently. Her nose still feels incredibly tender, and everything she says only comes out half-pronounced as she tries not to move her face very much. “Why am I speaking to Seth Brown?”
Joel looks at her for a long time, then at the digital clock on the wall. 12:41. 

“...I don’t know, kid, but the meeting’s soon enough. You need to wash up first.”

Ellie frowns as much as she can without moving anything but her eyes. If she got herself punched in the fucking face for nothing she might start hitting her head against the wall. “ No , Joel, just-”

“ Ellie. That’s enough. ” Joel stands and offers her a hand. Incensed, Ellie ignores it and gets up herself, blinking away any vertigo from the sudden movement. “Get changed, put your clothes in the laundry basket. I’ll see you outside your room in ten minutes. Understood?”

“No.” She hates how pathetic it sounds, but all the days of avoidance and muffled arguments and not being allowed outside pile up on Ellie like they’ve just been holding off until she actually felt clear-headed enough to realise how weird things have become. Her nose hurts like a bitch, and the idea that Joel thinks that she’s crying just because her eyes are watering is humiliation on top of everything else. “No, I don’t fucking understand anything . Why won’t you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“Language.”

“ What ?” She snaps. “Fucking- ‘language’? When have you ever given a motherfucking cocksucking rat’s asshole -”

“Ellie-” She shrugs off his hand the minute it touches her shoulder, blinking quickly. It’s easy to dismiss how similar her movement was to flinching until she sees Joel’s expression. “Easy, hey. Calm down.”

“Stop being nice to me,” Ellie demands, flushing. “You’re being insane and you obviously know what’s going on, so just tell me and- and we’ll be cool.” 

“I’m bein’ ‘nice’ because you just got punched in the face, kid.” He sighs heavily. “You want me to stop bein’ nice? Because we can have a longer conversation about how stupid this-”

“No, it’s been long already.” Ellie says impatiently. Her nose starts bleeding again, and she has to physically shuffle backwards so that he’ll let her wipe her own fucking blood away. Stop fucking coddling me . “I don’t- why won’t you just tell me? Did I do something?” She sounds less angry than she feels, or wants to feel. 

“No.” He says. Joel is similarly not pissed enough for this to feel at all satisfying.  

“ Joel ,” Ellie pleads, twisting the handkerchief around her hand. Pathetic. “Come on.”

“Look at me.” She does. “You remember what I said the first night down at the lakehouse?”

“I’m not a fucking stenographer, so no.”

Joel pauses, and she holds her breath, waiting for the reveal. “I said you would be alright. Can you remember that? Whatever happens?”

Ellie has to inhale at the speed of light to wind up for her reaction to that fucking bullshit response, her face heating even further. “ Are-you-a-motivational-speaker-person-well-I-sure-as-fuck-hope-not-because-that’s-complete-and-utter-bullshit-you-fucking-asshole-just-tell-me-”

Joel has had enough, apparently, because he grabs Ellie by the under-arms and lifts her to her feet, shutting her up while her brain tries to come up with a response to whatever the fuck he’s doing. “Get changed.” He orders, snapping out of any sentimentality. “Be ready in ten minutes. I’m getting something cold for your nose.”

Ellie doesn’t have a choice. She does what he tells her. 

Chapter Text

Ellie’s still frustrated enough about Joel’s attempt to console her without actually telling her what the fucking issue is , that she completely ignores him until they get to Seth’s office. She does obey his instructions to keep the frozen peas pressed against her face, but only because he sort of sounded like he wanted to push her down the stairs when she refused for the third time. It’s difficult to define the line between not being a dick and reacting to Joel being a dick. 

“I’ll wait outside,” He tells her. Ellie debates flipping him off, but then the office door opens and he has to physically nudge her into the room, so she doesn’t really have time. 

Seth Brown is not a good person. Obviously, because he’s head of PR for her asshole of a dad, but also on a more microscopic level. When Ellie’s paternity results came back, he came to her group home and told the woman in charge to feed Ellie less so that they could ‘use the foster kid angle’- basically, she needed to be skinny enough to garner sympathy with the public. That was before he’d even met Ellie herself, and when that happened he took her to a coffee house to ‘talk’ and refused to buy her anything while he ordered three consecutive Americanos for himself. He also wears loafers without socks. 

“Auditioning for Love Island? You’ve got the fashion sense.” She comments stiffly, focusing on his gross ankles rather than anything to do with the reason for this meeting. She’s already made a mental list of possibilities, ranging from her father starting a nuclear war to the press thinking she and his son are having an incestuous affair (that would be the second time that rumour has been printed). 

“Take a seat.” Seth says. He doesn’t comment on the frozen peas Ellie’s holding, or the rusty tint to the skin under her nose. There’s a bowl of wrapped candy on his desk that he slides possessively towards himself as soon as she sits down. 

“What am I doing here?” She asks, shifting in the squeaky leather of the chair.

Seth blows his nose into a damp scrap of tissue, tosses it onto a pile of papers, and looks Ellie in the eye. “I’m just briefing you on your speech. This shouldn’t take long, so don’t get comfortable.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Shit, I was just about to start sleeping.” He ignores her. “What speech?”

“The one that you’ll use to do damage control on your father’s reparative treatment policies. I’m sure you’ve been briefed-”

“I haven’t- reparative treatment?” Ellie repeats, frowning. “Like, the homophobia shit?”

“Watch your mouth, young lady.” Seth says severely, as if she hasn’t heard him saying worse stuff than that about some of the female staff members when they moved in. “You’ll need to start presenting an image that aligns with the President’s- speaking of, we’ll need to review your security personnel, and-”

“No, wait a fucking-”

“ Don’t interrupt .” Seth raises his voice. His ears are red. “There’s no time for you to take issue with the plan. The press have already had a field day, even with the statement we released as soon as the photos dropped.”

Ellie grips the arms of her chair. “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about. In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t get informed about shit. If something’s happened with my dad’s campaign, that kinda feels like his problem.”

“‘His problem’?” Seth scoffs. “That’s a convenient stance to take, isn’t it? Right when you’re the problem, that’s when you take a backseat.”

She wants to tell him that she’s not sure what fucking seat she’s been in, if not the back one, but there are more pressing issues at hand. “Why am I the problem? I’m not kidding, man. I literally have no clue what you’re talking about. If you want me to know, you gotta spell it out.”

“You don’t know anything?”

“I don’t have access to the internet, dickwad.” It occurs to Ellie that she usually would, actually, but Joel confiscated her tablet. She thinks maybe she’s swallowed a live animal, her stomach gives such a lurch. “I usually… I usually do, but not for like, a week.”

Seth leans back, his too-tight shirt straining to reveal some obnoxiously hairless skin down his front. Does he shave his fucking stomach? Ellie grimaces. “A few days ago- a little over a week- somebody tracked down some images from an old instagram account belonging to someone in your group home.”

It’s hard not to deflate, just slightly. Ellie was exhausted of working the poor little foster kid angle before they even started, and she’d been hoping for something more along the lines of ‘your father took another paternity test and actually this was all a big mistake and also, we found a way to send you back in time to a year ago, except also you get to keep Joel, Tess and Tommy around’. No such luck. 

“...Okay?”

Seth’s upper lip curls. “The account belonged to Riley Abel. Do you remember her?”

Ellie sort of wants to take off one of her shoes and throw it at his head. 

Once, she had to take a plane to New York, to talk about how fucking fantastic her father was for accepting her as his biological offspring. For hours after she got off the plane- her first flight ever, not that anyone asked- Ellie’s eardrums would suddenly feel like they’d burst, sharp crackles of changing air pressure that had her convinced she was going deaf. Hearing Riley’s name feels the same way. Ellie almost yelps with the bright excruciation of it.

“Maybe,” She says.

Seth nods, opening his laptop and turning it to face her, something more than his usual contempt written across his features. She squints at the screen.

Riley’s face is another shock. Ellie hasn’t seen it since her phone was confiscated and the cleaners threw out the funeral booklet, but it’s on Seth’s laptop, warm and fierce the way only Riley ever was. The girl beside her, a younger and brighter Ellie, is grinning with the kind of loose carelessness that the Now-Ellie can’t summon. 

She wishes she could remember when the picture was taken. She wishes, she wishes, she wishes she could think of anything at all, but Riley is right there, frozen in time with those beads in her hair and a moth drawn onto her wrist in sharpie because she couldn’t afford a good tattoo and Ellie convinced her not to get an infection just for some fucking ink. They’re holding hands. Ellie’s pale fingers against Riley’s warm brown skin, nails coloured in with the same marker as her wrist and it was all real. There are times Ellie convinces herself that she made the whole thing up, their friendship and whatever happened beyond it. But it’s there, and the relief of seeing an actual photograph of the two of them after they were all wiped from social media and photo albums and even the fucking photo booth strip was put in the pocket of some pants that Ellie can’t find anywhere, is almost enough to make her forget whose computer this is or why she might be here. She forgets that there’s always another shoe, ready to drop, because Riley is looking at the camera and it feels like she’s looking at Ellie for the first time in almost a year.

“Drop the smile.” Seth commands, as if he has any power over her at all. “This isn’t a trip down memory lane, Eleanor.”

Ellie snorts, emboldened by the memories. Does he think my full name is actually fucking Eleanor? After his PIs uncovered the fucking birth certificate saying ‘Ellie’? It’s comical. Tommy will think it’s the funniest thing in the world.

“Then what is it?”

“This is a post on Riley’s instagram from eighteen months ago- an account that you didn’t name when we were clearing social media. Were you aware of it?” He spins the laptop to face himself again. Ellie considers lying, but she’s not in the mood to please him after the reminder of what they all took from her. 

“Sure was.”

Seth’s nostrils flare. “Well, I hope you’re happy. I’m sure you understand the impact this has had on your father’s campaign messaging.”

“Uh- no, not really. We’re holding hands. Are we five? That doesn’t say anything.” Ellie reasons, her voice coming out a little tighter. As quickly as it came, the fighting spirit begins to slip out of her.

“Did you even read the caption?” 

Ellie frowns. Sorry I was slightly distracted by seeing my best friend’s face for the first time in forever. “No.”

Seth spins the laptop back towards her. Scanning the image again, Ellie takes in Riley’s old instagram username, an inside joke so that nobody looking up her real name could find it. This one was just for them. Underneath the picture, she’d written: 

Kiss me if ur dad’s a fucking bigot 

It was the sort of stupid, reckless thing that only Riley could put online, and it had been fun to experience those sorts of rebellions vicariously. It was a dumb joke. Ellie had told Riley so, and then she’d done exactly as the caption requested. But the account was private. Ellie hadn’t been worried about anyone finding it.

“How did you get this?” She asks.

“The Seraphinite, a student newsletter, released it last Wednesday- we were only able to stay ahead of the news because a concerned family friend with inside information told your father first.” Seth speaks like it’s a total drag to tell Ellie anything at all. She feels a little like someone is carving out her insides with a blunt spoon. 

“Who?”

“Alistair Gusler, the son of Rich-”

“That motherfucker !” Ellie spits, digging her fingers into the arms of her chair so hard that her nail beds hurt. “He did this, then. I fucking-”

“ Mr Gusler told your father because he knows the editor of the newsletter and correctly anticipated how problematic it would become.”

“Problematic.” Ellie breathes. “So… My dad saw this?” She has a sudden vision of her father’s hand bruising the skin of her face again, of him making good on his threat of conversion therapy. She wasted the pain of Henry’s punch. 

“The American people have seen this. It’s plastered across every tabloid- we issued a statement denying any inappropriate relationship between the two of you, the minute it came out, but there’s only so much we could do without going to the source.”

“The newspaper?”

“The newspaper has already been shut down. I was talking about you.” Seth glares at Ellie. “As I was saying before your ignorance took over this entire conversation, we’ve drafted a speech for you to give later today. We’ve also got several lawyers who will be working with you on the defamation case against the tabloids.”

Ellie’s skin hurts. “I hate lawyers.”

“Your own father was a lawyer, before-”

“Exactly. Hate them. I’m not fucking doing that, man, I just- aren’t you guys supposed to be good at getting rid of this shit?” She sucks air through her teeth, blinking quickly. “Why didn’t anyone tell me earlier? I’m not doing some fucking speech five seconds after I find out that everyone knows. What, am I meant to just-”

“You’re meant to do what you’re told!” Seth snarls, leaning forward so suddenly that all Ellie’s thoughts about her father’s reactions spring to the forefront of her mind, and she jerks back. Her chair scratches the floor. “Thankfully, the picture isn’t incriminating enough that it couldn’t be dismissed as a close friendship and terrible sense of humour. If we mention your friend’s issues with drugs…” 

Ellie’s ears start ringing. “No, I’m not gonna say that. I’m not talking about her like that, I won’t- this isn’t even my fucking fault !” 

“‘Not your fault’?” Seth mocks. “The last thing your father needed right now was his loudmouth daughter interrupting what has been a flawless campaign for reparative therapies across the country, with some immature cry for attention. The only thing that would be worse for him would be if you were a drug addict, yourself! From here onwards, you will present a unified front- you will categorically deny any and all allegations of homosexuality, provide statements for the defamation case against the tabloids, and obey every instruction you are given.”

“Or what?” Ellie challenges half-heartedly. “You’ve already taken everything from me.”

Seth narrows his eyes. “ Or you can say goodbye to any more of those little ‘mental health retreats’ like the one you took earlier this year. Your father sure regrets it; the influence of your security personnel is already an issue for his public image, so he’d be all too happy to stop letting you go.” He pauses, raising his arms behind his head smugly. Ellie focuses on the revulsion she feels at the sight of his sweat-patches so she won’t need to think too hard about what everything means. This feels like a sick prank- it’s all happening too quickly for her to understand any of it. Seth continues, “Maybe it’s time to review your security team, actually. I’ll speak to Marlene. In the meantime, he might consider alternative ‘vacations’. There’s a wilderness therapy program in Montana that specialises in young girls with attitude problems.”

“Why?” Ellie’s voice doesn’t sound like her own. Don’t think about it, don't think about it, don’t think about it. “Wh- my security team has nothing to do with this thing.”

Aside from the fact that Joel knew, and Tess, and probably Tommy. Aside from the fact that Joel hid this from Ellie, even when she begged him to tell her what was wrong. Aside from the fucking fact that he let her fake being sick for a week, wasting away in her room, and barely got involved because he couldn’t possibly tell her the truth about what had happened. About Ellie’s life being split open for everyone to see. About any of it.

“It’s more about presenting a cohesive image to the press. Your bodyguard hardly does that.”

“Joel doesn’t say anything bad about-”

“If you aren't aware of the issue, any conversation is a waste of my time. Am I your counsellor? You have a speech to rehearse, and I have a PR crisis to continue handling.” He interrupts. He thrusts the printed copy of the speech in her direction and begins typing something, by way of dismissal. 

Ellie’s thoughts feel hazy. This should be a nightmare, or a crueller fantasy she tortures herself with when she can’t sleep. It shouldn’t exist for other people, too. 

* * *

Joel watches Ellie with the sympathy she’d wanted so badly just half an hour ago, eyebrows all pulled together and eyes soft underneath them. This is how she wanted him to be when Henry hit her, eager to make her comfortable. Gentle. 

Now, she feels vaguely nauseated. She walks past him, shoving the frozen peas in his direction and completely ignoring whatever he starts to say. She feels like the walls of this fucking house are trapping her, a lab rat that they can all gawk at and create narratives for and never, ever tell her any-fucking-thing. It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit, it’s all bullshit, it’s all-

She’s jerked back from her path towards Marlene’s office when Joel’s hand closes around her arm. She’s forced to turn on the spot, to look him in the eyes, and to register that he’s moving to wrap his arms around her a split-second before she manages to pull away. 

“Don’t fucking touch me!” She pants. He was going to hug her. He was going to hug her. 

He was going to hug her.

Ellie’s spent more time than she’s willing to admit wishing Joel would do something that kind. Now, imagining what would’ve happened if she hadn’t just pulled away, all she wants to do is hit something.

“Ellie-”

“Don’t talk to me, either! You fucking- you fucker !” She moves forward, pushing Joel’s chest with both hands. “You fucking knew? This whole fucking time, you knew, and- and- and you didn’t tell me!” There’s not enough of Ellie to feel embarrassed that she’s almost crying; she feels torn in a billion different directions, confusion and rage and grief and humiliation and betrayal. Betrayal , there’s so much of it. It’s filling her up like boiling water into a glass. Ellie thinks she’s probably about to shatter.

Joel is silent. There’s an awful look on his face. She can’t stand it. 

“Stop looking at me. You’re a fucking asshole, Joel. I- I don’t even think you regret this. A week, Joel. More than a fucking week, you knew, and I-” Ellie cuts herself off, hot and cold and sweaty. If she looks back, it seems that there should be a trail of blood behind her. She’s empty of it, of everything. “You took the tablet. Is that because you knew?”

Joel hesitates, then nods. “It was for your own good.”

“Liar!” It comes out all cracked and wobbling, caught in a sob. Ellie scrubs both hands across her face and cries out when it elicits a fresh wave of pain from her nose. “You’re a liar, Joel! How could you ?” 

“Kiddo, you…” 

“I what? What, Joel?” She turns away, feeling insane. “The whole world saw it, except me. Do you even understand how that feels? Everyone knows what I am, now!”

“What do you mean?”

“A fucking- you fucking know what, Joel, don’t be stupid. And now they’re- they’re giving me…” Ellie sniffles and makes a pathetic sound, flinching back when Joel takes a step towards her. “I’m gonna make a speech denying it, and it’s your fault because if I’d known I would’ve changed it, or- or something. I would’ve been able to think before Seth-”

“What speech? What speech, Ellie?” Joel demands urgently. 

Ellie holds the sides of her head. She tries to breathe. “About me, about Riley, it’s all… It’s all there, you can read it. I don’t care . It isn’t like you don’t usually know things before me; you can tell me what it says, actually. Or don’t, if you think that I’m gonna be safer the other way.”

“I kept it from you because that’s what I was told to do , Ellie. Your father, he-”

“Suddenly you give a shit about what my dad wants?” She looks at a spot beside his head. “You know, Seth said something about you, too. He said there was something between you and my dad that would make it hard to present a ‘united front’. What did he mean?”

Joel is quiet for a long time. 

“Right.” Ellie laughs hollowly. “You don’t want me to know. It’s ‘what’s best for me’, yeah. Great work , Joel, you really fucking protected me. Isn’t it obvious how happy I am?” 

“Ellie, just- Where are you goin’?” He asks, his voice strained. 

“Marlene.”

“Why?”

Ellie stops, her eyes burning. “I don’t owe you any goddamn information, Joel, so fuck off. ” 

His jaw twitches. “You can feel whatever you’re feelin’, kid, but I’m still your guard. That means I don’t leave your side.” There’s a brief pause, and Ellie hears her heartbeat loud in her ears. “Let’s just go up to your room. Talk.”

“Tell me what Seth was talking about.” 

“What?”

“Tell me what he was talking about, the thing that could mean you were against my dad, or whatever.” Ellie tries to drain her voice of all its emotion, but it’s still shaking as she faces Joel. “Then I’ll go back.”

“It has nothin’ to do with this.”

Disappointment plunges into Ellie like a rock in water. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Ellie, I’m being serious. Come upstairs, we can talk about this, figure somethin’ out.”

She suddenly misses Joel, which is crazy when she’s in front of him. But this- she didn’t think that her version of Joel would do this, not in a million years. She’s the one who fucks things up, not him. He gets to forgive her for saying or doing the wrong thing, and then they always move on. Ellie doesn’t know how it’s supposed to go when he hurts her. 

“But I don’t want to talk to you.” She says in a voice that comes out all small and childish. “I can’t trust you.”

He reacts like she’s socked him across the jaw, eyes wide and appalled. Ellie’s face is wet, but the tears are starting to fade from anger to sadness. She doesn’t want Joel to see that. 

“I gotta talk to Marlene.” She says. “If you have to come, then follow me, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not unless you’re gonna tell me what’s going on.”
Instead of breaking down and telling Ellie everything, all the secrets he’s kept, Joel just looks straight ahead and nods. She mimics his posture, straight back and chin up, and they move forwards.

Marlene seems to be expecting Ellie- or, she’s not surprised to see her. She doesn’t comment on her tear-swollen face, or the way Ellie shuts the door before Joel can even suggest coming in with her. She calmly closes the papers she was filling out and watches.

Ellie’s always hated this office, usually because she’d associated it with a new security grunt to come and try to keep her in line. She hasn’t been in here for a few months, since Joel started working as her guard. It’s not as bad as she recalls; not contrasted against Seth, at least. The decor is less pretentious- not difficult, really, but it’s something.

“You have to tell me the truth,” She says first. Marlene raises her eyebrows. 

“Seth didn’t tell you? Kid, we’re-”

“Not about that.” Ellie feels the crumpled speech in her fist. She still hasn’t read it. “I know about all that shit. I mean about Joel.”

Marlene leans on her forearms, eyes narrowed. Ellie’s struck by the reminder that she worked here even before her father arrived. Why hadn’t she considered it sooner? Marlene’s the only person in this goddamn place who wasn’t employed by him, she’ll give Ellie answers if nobody else will. Her loyalties are with herself, surely.

It hurts as much as it did the first time- remembering that Joel prioritised what her dick of a father wanted over what she did. She begged him, and he didn’t care. It doesn’t feel like it fits together. It shouldn’t be a part of Joel that she has to consider, not combined with everything else she’s known. He’s never chosen someone else over Ellie. Tommy and Tess don’t count; they’re family, but it’s still jarring to realise that he still chooses his boss over his… her. Ellie.

“What about him?”

Ellie crosses her legs up on the chair. “I know there’s something that makes people think he- or Tess, or Tommy- won’t present a united front with my dad, now that all this is happening. I wanna know why.”

“Have you thought about asking him?” Ellie doesn’t bother responding to that. Marlene continues, “Have you considered that it could just be how controversial your father’s views are? Plenty of people don’t agree with him.”

“None of them have social media, as far as I know. You wouldn’t hire them if they were outwardly opposed to his politics. Tell me- I’m not a little kid, I can handle whatever.”

Marlene nods. “I know you’re not, so I’ll talk to you like you’re an adult.” 

Took you long enough, Ellie thinks. “Great.”

The woman takes a short breath. Ellie braces herself, pressing her back and arms to the chair around her. 

“Did you know that Joel had a daughter?”

Had. 

Ellie blinks, opening and closing her mouth. “What?” She manages, after a while. Marlene’s expression doesn’t change- she’s never been particularly sentimental about these sorts of things. “What?” Ellie says again, a little louder.

“She was your age when she died. A little younger, maybe. Sarah.”

The sound rushes out of the room for a moment, and the air with it. Ellie chokes on a cough. 

Sarah M - 2001. 

She hadn’t ever contemplated that Joel had a kid, seeing that scratched into the lakehouse. Partially because that seems like the sort of shit you’d know about, if you spend eighteen hours a day with someone for several months, but also just because he’s never properly acted like- or never let himself act like- fuckfuckfuckfuck. 

“What happened to her? And- wait, why would this have anything to do with my dad?”

“Your father used to be a-”

“A lawyer, I know.”

Marlene hums her agreement, typing something into her laptop and nodding to herself. “Yeah, there we go.” She glances at the screen, clearly reading off some kind of file. “In around 2003, Joel came home to help Tommy recover from an injury associated with his-”

“Time in Desert Storm, I know -”

“You gonna let me finish, kid?” Marlene asks. Ellie flushes, nodding.

“My bad.”

“Joel came home to help Tommy and spend time with his daughter, Sarah, who’d been staying with her estranged mother while he was away. He’d been home for around five months, working as a contractor- that was his job before he joined the military- and he was late picking Sarah up from school. Someone else picked her up on the street instead.”

Ellie’s stomach twists around itself. “Who?”

“Robert Leigh. He allegedly told the kid that he was…” Marlene trails off, scanning her laptop for a minute before she continues. “One of Joel’s coworkers. Took Sarah to his house a few towns over, raped her. She died of internal bleeding.”

Bile sits heavy in Ellie’s throat. “Fuck,” She breathes. 

“You got that right.” Marlene says, and closes the computer. “Long story short, your father defended the guy. Got him off with just eight months in prison, four years of house arrest.”

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. 

Ellie breathes carefully out of her nose before she can respond. “How?”

Marlene’s eyes meet hers, and she prepares for the worst. It’s confronting just to see the expression on the woman’s face, knowing how detached she’s been from the very worst Ellie had gone through. This must be terrible.

“He argued that Sarah looked sixteen, and had told Michael so. Said everything was consensual. She took a couple falls on the way back towards Austin- he claimed the internal injuries were from those, and it took too long to find her body for them to have definitive evidence to the contrary. The most he got charged with was assault and attempted kidnapping.” Marlene swallows.

“Attempted?”

“According to the defendant, she escaped too soon after being kidnapped for it to be a valid charge against him. Finally, your father insisted that whatever happened to Sarah was a result of Joel’s neglect, being so late to pick her up that day. The trial lasted far longer than it should’ve, and according to Joel’s own lawyer, it left him virtually broke.”

“I don’t- he- how did I not know about this?”

“It was a messy case. Your father didn’t exactly want it coming up again, so he paid Joel off to keep quiet, and shut down everyone who reported on it. He’s a wealthy man.”

“Joel wouldn’t accept that.” Ellie says, more to herself than to Marlene. 

“You try having a sick brother, no money, and a dead kid, Ellie. See how you react when someone offers to pay off your mortgage, legal and medical fees.” Marlene says flatly. Ellie grimaces. “It would’ve meant that Joel was excluded from any list of candidates for the Secret Service, but… he performed extremely well following the incident, in his specialised task force. Worked his way up through the Secret Service, and accepted the job when I described it to him. I’m sure you’ve heard about that.”

“That’s generous.” Ellie says. “Apparently I haven’t heard about any of the rest of his life.”
“And why would you? He’s your guard, kid, not your friend.”

That stings. Hurts, actually, a little more than on the surface. But, objectively, Marlene is right. Joel was never obligated to tell Ellie anything. And this is a lot bigger than the embarrassing stories she’d asked Tommy for. This is bigger than anything Ellie’s ever been through. 

A part of her feels like she should’ve seen this, if she ever claimed to know Joel at all. She’s always had a sense that he was hiding something, but at some point she’d put it down to secrets from his other jobs and military task force and left it at that. She’d never tried to dig deeper into his family; Tommy had been enough of a revelation, when she found out about that. She doesn’t even know how this entire story would sound coming out of Joel’s mouth. She can’t imagine a world in which he’d want her to know. 

“Thanks for telling me.” Ellie says quietly. Marlene gives her a half-smile that’s nowhere near happy.

“If it was up to me, kid, you’d know a whole lot more than you have been.” 

Did anyone say it wasn’t up to you? Was there a rule, saying that you weren’t allowed to inform me about any of this? 

Ellie stands, staring at the glossy wood of the desk. The numbness of this moment is completely different to the deep-end numbness she’s grown familiar with over the past while. She’s sure it won’t last as long; the other kind doesn’t come from shock the way this one does. It hurts in her bones, while this one just makes her skin itchy. “Okay.”
As she turns to go, Marlene’s chair moves against the floor. She’s stood up as well. “Ellie,” She says.

“Yeah?”
“This thing, with Joel and your dad. And the other shit. Do you see it becoming a problem?”

Ellie presses her lips together for a long moment. “‘Becoming’ is a bullshit word to use, no offence. It’s a massive fucking problem.”

Marlene dips her chin, and then Ellie’s out of her office again and her fingers don’t feel like her own.

Joel doesn’t try to talk to Ellie until she’s getting her makeup done for the televised interview. It’s barely even an interview; she’s just delivering her prepared speech and then she’s done, all within the space of five minutes. 

He stands nearby, telling one of the makeup artists to be gentle with Ellie’s nose. She looks up at him and she’s caught; he sees her and she can’t look away.

“You don’t have to go through with this.” He says. Ellie looks at him and tries to sort out what she’s feeling. It’s hard to separate pity from anger from sadness from loneliness, and even more difficult to sort them back into the boxes they came from. She’s not sure what’s making her feel each different way. 

“Yes, I do.” She wonders if he sees himself in her, giving in to an ultimatum from her bastard of a father to protect what she cares about. Does he think she’s weak? What Joel went through was so much worse. Does it make him disgusted to see her reacting this way to things that must be trivial in comparison? 

“You don’t. We can forget the whole damn thing, go to your room and watch that TV show you showed me.”

“You hated it.”

“Thought you mentioned the second episode bein’ better, though.” Joel offers. Ellie’s chest hurts, torn between wishing she’d accepted the hug earlier and let it all be okay, and wishing he would stop trying so hard when all she wants to do is focus long enough to know what to think. She wants to be mad or sad enough that this all dissolves into white noise, but she’s too stretched in both directions for it to work.

“Not really.” She tilts her head to the side, letting someone apply a brown-ish powder around the edges of her face. 

“Ellie, look at me. C’mon.” Joel herds the team of makeup artists away for a moment, squatting beside Ellie’s chair so she’s forced to look in his general direction. “What did Marlene say to make you think you had to do this, kiddo? This ain’t you.”

“Joel, please can we just not-”

“Goddamnit, Ellie, listen for a minute.” Joel holds up one hand. “The things you’re about to say, they don’t come from you. You know that. Whatever Seth or Marlene told you, there ain’t a damn thing we can’t work out ourselves. You don’t have to do this .”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Joel sighs, bowing his head for a while. Ellie focuses on pulling air in through her nostrils, and out through her mouth. “When I first heard what had happened, all I wanted to do was protect you from it. I know the ways your father reacted in the past, and I- if you didn’t know, you couldn’t feel the fear of it. That’s all. I’d thought it would blow over, and you were already sick…”

“I thought we talked about how I was faking it.”

“Not that kind of sick. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”

Ellie picks at one of her fingernails. “Are you telling me not to do this speech because you think I’m gay?”

He’s silent for a minute, then he clears his throat. “I’m tellin’ you not to do this speech because it’ll only cause you pain, kiddo.”

“If I don’t do it, my dad will hit me. Kinda seems like it’d be causing pain both ways.”

“I’d protect you, you know that.”

“The same way you protected me from this?” Ellie looks up sharply, full of remorse and worse, satisfaction, when she sees Joel’s expression. “I didn’t… I don’t want things to go to shit, I guess, but they are. I gotta stay afloat. Rule one of learning to swim, right?”

What a shitty thing to throw back in his face. Ellie’s sick of herself. 

* * *

The interview is… not good. Not for any real reason, either. It’s solely because, a minute into her bullshit speech about choosing the ‘right path’ and engaging in purely platonic female friendships, Ellie sees someone behind the bright yellow lights who looks a little too much like Riley. Suddenly, the makeup is too thick on her skin and the lights are fucking baking her, and she can’t focus so someone sends a message to the journalist on the other line and they shut down the interview within twenty seconds. It’s just enough time for Ellie to start having a panic attack, which is fucking fantastic when Seth Brown is staring at her like I told you so, even though the only fucking thing he told her was that she had to do this. And there’s nobody who looks like Riley at all, because of course there isn’t if Christine employed them.

Joel is gone. She can’t find him anywhere. Everyone who wasn’t strictly necessary had to get out of the room to make space for the filming equipment, and that included overly concerned security guards, so he’s gone. Not that Ellie needed him anyway, crumpled against a wall with a million people shouting at her. 

She’s taken out of the room and into another, where her father greets her with a bunch of his old law school friends. Ellie takes a brief lunch break to retch into the toilet, hands shaking more from the old, immature fear of throwing up than anything else. 

“You got the main parts out,” Her father says of her interview. “I’m grateful that you were so cooperative.” It’s not mean. Ellie hates herself for forgetting to despise him- at least, so much that she could spit in his face- in that moment, rising up to the warmth of the almost-praise like a flower to the sun. She has plenty of time to punish herself for it later on, pinching the skin of her arms between her nails while the lawyers and her father discuss strategy. The case should be easy, they say. Ellie wonders if they thought the case against Joel was also this simple. 

One of the lawyers has brought a younger woman with him, her eyes bright as they observe the conversation, but her mouth eternally closed. Ellie likes her the best, not that there’s much competition, or that it’s possible to like a lawyer beyond ground level. She’s the only one under forty-five, and the only one who isn’t white- it shouldn’t matter, but it’s unusual when it comes to the majority of people her father employs.

“Maria,” She greets, and it takes Ellie a second to realise that that’s her name and not just what she thinks Ellie is called.

“Ellie.” She replies. “You’re a lawyer?”

“Trying to be.” She sits beside Ellie, pulling two bottles of water from her handbag and sliding one across the table. “I’ve been made aware that these men all know a lot more than I do, so I’m on note-taking for a while.”

“That’s bullshit.”
Maria’s lips pull up a little. “I thought I’d see how you’re doing.”

“Fucking fabulous.” Ellie says glumly, “Trying not to die of boredom.” A total lie. Her mind is going a million miles an hour, and she’s still getting nowhere. More than anything, she just wants to go back to bed and find out that this was all a weird vision that she had because of food poisoning, or something. 

“Hm.” Maria says it like she doesn’t believe Ellie at all, but she doesn’t push her either. “Well, if you’re interested in knowing what’s going on, I can fill you in.”
“Sure.”

She nods, and motions towards the group of men. They’re laughing about something, which Ellie hopes is unrelated to the dead-best-friend’s-instagram-potential-gay-daughter fiasco. “They were just discussing how to combat what most of the tabloids are claiming, which is contextual truth and substantial truth- that means that they’re claiming that at the time of printing, they had evidence to suggest that what they were writing was true, and therefore not defamation. Following?”

“Uh-huh.” Ellie says, focusing despite herself. 

“So, our argument is that the suggestions of any inappropriate relationship between you and Ms Abel-”

“Riley,” Ellie says abruptly. It’s already hard enough to hear that any relationship between the two of them is deemed sinful enough to actually be grounds for a legal trial, on top of hearing Riley referred to that way. Maria furrows her brow, looking at Ellie for a moment before she nods. 

“I’m sorry. Between you and Riley- any suggestion of it is actually more of a breach of privacy, which we can add onto the defamation charges for a higher damages payment.”

Ellie frowns. “I don’t need to get paid for this.”

Maria sips her water, nodding. “It’s your father who would have the money in trust until you turn eighteen. If it helps, it’s more about making the tabloids pay than giving you a reward.”

“Okay. Can I be honest for a sec, Maria?”

The woman nods seriously. “Of course.”

“It kinda seems like there’s no fucking leg to stand on here. No offence. Like, the newspapers printing a picture of Riley and me that actually did exist doesn’t feel like defamation, it feels like a statement of fact.” And is it so terrible to be gay? Really, honestly? Because I’m not sure anymore. 

“You’re right. The picture itself, since it’s proven to be real, falls more under the privacy category- we’re suing because of the allegations against you and your father being printed as a result of it.”

“My father? But he isn’t gay.” Ellie says, then rushes to add, “And I’m not either.”

Maria looks down, lowering her voice. “Ellie, it’s fine if you are. You should know that.”
“But I’m not. So.” Fucking coward, the Riley in Ellie’s mind spits. She winces. 

“That’s fine, too. The allegations weren’t about that; it’s less likely to be considered reasonable, by a judge. The things that are being printed are more along the lines of your father being abusive, given his support of conversion therapy, as well as accusations being made that you’re addicted to drugs as well.” 

“What if I was?” Ellie challenges, just because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Then I would hope you had discreet ways of getting treatment for it, and we would never need to discuss it again.” 

“Huh.”

“Any other questions?” 

* * *

Maria stays after the other lawyers have left, explaining the case to Ellie and answering a million inquiries about everything to do with the case. It’s a good distraction, Ellie’s found. Joel is outside the door again and he makes her eat a burrito for dinner even when she barely looks at him, but with Maria there it’s easy to pretend that it’s only because she’s busy. 

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to prove that Alistair Gusler was behind all this. Ellie remembers hearing that he was into technology, but it doesn’t explain how he found the account, and she’s forced to let go of it after Maria explains for the fifth time that she can look into it, but it’s unlikely. She’s still Ellie’s favourite lawyer in the world.

“Shit,” Ellie says, as they walk towards the front gates. “It’s dark already? Sorry, dude.”

Maria shrugs. “It’s fine. I’ll get a cab.”

“They’re fucking expensive.”

“Well, I plan on winning a case pretty soon,” She says, with the edge of a smirk. 

“Which way do you live?” Joel startles Ellie by speaking, enough that she turns to look at him without realising the wave of everything it will bring with it. Thankfully, he only looks at her for a couple of seconds before he’s focussed back on Maria. 

“Around Riggs Park.”

“My brother’s out at Takoma, he can drive you.”

Maria pauses. “He work here?”
“He’s my driver,” Ellie says, a little more proudly than is probably necessary. “Best in the biz’, they did all his background checks and stuff. Just don’t let him play his music.”

“M-hm,” Maria considers. “Alright, if he’s really headed that way. Sure.” 

Joel texts Tommy, and she leaves after handing a few of the documents outlining the case to Ellie. It’s a rare luxury to be informed about what’s happening. Ellie’s too exhausted to be particularly refreshed by it.

“What’re those?” Joel asks on the way to her bedroom. Ellie tries not to tense too visibly. 

“Court docs.”

“You plannin’ on bein’ involved with this case, then?” 

“Well, it is about me .” She can’t keep the bite out of her tone, and feels guilty for it. Fuck, why isn’t it easier just to choose whether she’s mad at him or sad for him? “You can read them.”

“It’s fine.”

Yeah, he probably doesn’t have fantastic memories associated with court, asshole.

“Okay.” 

Ellie heads into her room after scrubbing the rest of the makeup off her skin, leaving her entire face reddened and raw. Joel is waiting there for her.

“Can we talk, kiddo?” He says, in the way that would usually have Ellie gearing up to accept some life lesson or lecture about something. 

“I’m actually really tired,” She says instead. 

“Ellie-”

“Joel, no .” She watches his expression darken, and swallows. “You don’t get to be mad at me. Not today, okay? Or tomorrow, or- like, for a really long fucking time.”

“Alright.” He sighs. Ellie watches him cross the room, feeling dead on her feet and everywhere else, too. Does Joel feel that way? What date did his daughter die? Is it as painful as it was the first year, in all the others? 

Ellie wishes she could ask. She doesn’t know if she can do all this- the Riley stuff, hours and hours of it- every year until she’s old. But she already knows that the words will fizzle out part-way up her throat, and it’s not worth creating any more of This between her Joel, anyway. There are some things she’s sure nobody will ever tell her.

“I’m sorry.”

He looks up, confused. “You have nothin’ to apologise for, kiddo.”

I’m sorry about what my father did to you, Ellie wants to supply to the contrary. I’m sorry that your job is to keep his daughter alive, even though I don’t deserve it. I’m sorry that I’m not good, or kind, or generous the way I’m sure she was. The way you would raise someone to be. I’m sorry it wasn’t my father who lost his kid instead of you. I’m sorry I make it all so difficult. I’m sorry I asked Marlene, and never told you that I knew. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“I’m really tired,” Ellie says again. Joel leaves her, and she falls asleep with a name carved into the backs of her eyelids. 

Sarah Miller. Sarah Miller. Sarah Miller. 

Sarah M. - 2001

Chapter Text

It takes two weeks of meetings with the lawyers- largely excluding Maria, unfortunately- for Ellie’s presence to be deemed unnecessary. Her father’s had this idea that she should see both the impact of her own sinful behaviour (fucking achieved) and somehow gain a greater appreciation for the ‘hard work’ he ‘puts into her upbringing’ ( not fucking achieved- the portion of the fortnight that he can’t make it is undoubtedly the most productive, since there’s nobody asking about golf club memberships or campaign decisions.) He doesn’t look at her once, even when he’s speaking directly to Ellie. She’s pretty sure she prefers it that way. 

It’s also decided that Ellie’s presence in court isn’t strictly imperative. She can provide some completely-totally-solely-bullshit statement about the mental impact of the tabloids’ coverage (because obviously it hasn’t impacted her one bit), and the rest will be handled by the legal team, so she’s not actually sure what she was doing in the room in the first place. As with everything else in her fucking life, she’s in the backseat with no idea who she’s being driven by or where she’s being taken. 

On one of the few days she can make it, Maria assures her that she’ll explain anything Ellie wants to know, but even that gets exhausting after a while. It’s not as if anything Ellie wants or says will be received well by the people in the room, anyway. Not even the edge of disappointment in the woman’s voice when she asks if there’s really nothing she wants to understand is enough motivation to summon any curiosity at all. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if Ellie feels this numb and sad and empty and too-full because that’s the way she was made, or because that’s the way her life has sculpted her to be. It’s frustrating, how it keeps finding new ways to be worse.

It also might have something to do with the fact that Ellie’s barely spoken to Joel. She says enough , she reasons; she tells him when she’s hungry (even if it’s mostly untrue- she just doesn’t want him to get all weird and concerned), says hi when she sees him first-thing, and answers his questions about how she’s feeling- admittedly, very rarely in more detail than ‘fine’. The point is that she’s not being a complete dick. Every time she considers it, when the anger’s all bubbled up after a long day doing fuck-all in her father’s meeting room with a bunch of people who don’t care about her and all she can think is why didn’t you tell me I can’t do this I wanted to be able to trust you, she’s reminded of what’s happened to him, and she can’t go through with it on more than one guilt-ridden occasion. She sees a deep-set sadness in him, suddenly, and she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like seeing pain in someone who’d previously done the most to alleviate hers. She doesn’t like feeling sorry for him.

Selfishly, Ellie wants the old Joel back, before she knew about this stuff and before he’d hurt her and felt guilty about it. He’s supposed to be strong, solid, unbreakable.

She wants her anger to be unreasonable, to be hauled out of bed for a brisk walk and a Big Talk (not to turn into fucking Dr Suess) that will end in her apology, and everything good again. Joel can be mad or stern or whatever- anything but this, even if it means Ellie’s fucked up for the thousandth time so that it’s he who will need to do the forgiving. Ellie’s always been worse at that. She’s not sure she even knows where to start. 

Maybe she’s already done it- maybe she’s forgiven Joel, and the only thing stopping them from being normal is that she hasn’t realised. Ellie doesn’t know if it’s meant to be obvious. She’s definitely still angry, when she sees her face on a newspaper left somewhere and thinks this is why I’ll never be able to have friends again, but then there’s a slightly more logical (and irritating) part of her explaining that just because Joel knew about this, doesn’t mean it’s his fault. The truth is, there’s so much trouble inside Ellie that when she continues trying to sort her feelings out, betrayed and angry and sad could all stem from a range of sources and it’s too much effort to go on making sense of it. So they remain very not-organised and go on floating around her mind, taunting her with their furious ambiguity.

Ellie doesn’t miss her inability to get out of bed, but she longs for the cool, quiet sadness of the past few weeks. None of these fucking problems will dissolve into each other.

She went to Marlene five days after the interview and tried to ask for more information. She’d reasoned that extra clarity would be useful for sorting it all out. Facts over feelings, or whatever her half-brother wants printed on his gravestone.

“I’m too busy for this,” Marlene had replied, unimpressed. “You think I have time to what- just look shit up for you? Joel’s past was relevant to current discussions and I figured you’re old enough to deal with it. Don’t prove me wrong, kid.”

“But-”

“It’s handled.” She’d looked at Ellie like she was being childish. “Unless you have questions relevant to the safety and security of the First Family, I’d like to get back to work.”

* * *

Nothing makes sense. Nobody’s acting like they should; Ellie’s dad is unbearable, but he hasn’t yelled at her since before she did the interview. When it was asked of her by a guy with hair coming out of his ears in great tufts, Ellie’s declaration that she definitely was not homosexual was met with a pat on the shoulder that she almost avoided flinching away from- she hated her father more than she’d ever hated anyone, in that moment. Even if he can’t bring himself to look at her, she feels the sickly syrup of his approval and wishes she’d never made the fucking speech at all, if for no other reason than to stop feeling so disgusting. She takes after him as the days drag on, though. She can’t look at herself either.

Marlene’s sudden explanation of Joel’s past also strikes Ellie as odd. It seems strange that anyone would explain anything vital to her, even if she ‘needed to hear it’, and the sudden urge to treat Ellie like an adult feels based on nothing but a change in mood. She can’t think what she did to deserve it. Information has always been a privilege- even with Joel, now- and Marlene’s never cared enough to grant it. It doesn’t add up.

Perhaps most importantly,  Joel is being far too respectful of Ellie’s demands of silence and solitude, and she often wonders if he thought she looked like her father when she was screaming at him in the hallway, and that’s why he doesn’t push her to get over this whole thing sooner. When he returns her tablet to her room and Ellie throws it against a wall, he doesn’t even get mad. She wishes he had hit her instead. It’s the first and last time she lets her anger appear in more than the tiny crescent moons she pinches into her wrists during meetings, for fear of splitting open the cracks between them. Joel sees her arms in worried silence and puts a soothing cream and band-aids on Ellie’s bed the next afternoon while she’s not-talking to Frank. She can’t bring herself to use them.

There ain’t a single good reason for me to have somethin’ against you, he’d said, during a conversation that feels centuries in the past. He’d sounded so certain. She lies awake in bed every night and feels the barely-there assurance begin to unravel. 

She thinks, knows , that he’s a better person than her. He took this job because she needed someone to protect her, and he’s done it without the bitterness, the rage, she’s sure she would carry outside herself were she in the same position. If she were Joel, Ellie would’ve done horrible things to herself by now, and yet the only times she’s seen him angry at her father were on her behalf. It’s not justice. You don’t deserve his care, someone whispers into her thoughts. You deserve the family you were given, and he deserved his. 

* * *

The idea of revenge floods Ellie’s mind in mid-September. 

Really, it starts when she’s swimming in the indoor pool to clear her head, and Tess is the one watching because it’s two in the morning, and Ellie starts to think about how it might feel to stop moving her arms and legs and just float face-down until nothing exists anymore. Not the knot of emotion taking up all the space between her ears, not the vans parked outside with various news networks’ logos plastered across their sides, not the constant knowledge that she represents something more than just herself between Joel and her own father. She thinks what a relief it would be for the people she actually gives a shit about, after the initial anger faded.

It’s a stupid thought. The kind of thing she’d resolved, for a second, not to feel anymore. When Ellie hasn’t felt like it was worth holding on for herself, she’s always been able to balance it out by reminding herself what an inconvenience it would be for everyone else if she died- how convincing is that argument?. 

She knows what she would want to do if someone instead of something had killed Riley. She feels more and more sure of it as the green of the garden begins to ebb and change to gold; she’d want to destroy the thing they loved most. She’d want to show them what loss is. Whether it was their best friend, or girlfriend, or whatever- Ellie knows that she would do whatever it took to take it. To make them know what they did to her. If that makes her a terrible person, she’ll have to be fine with that. It’s more important that it makes her a determined one.

The second night after she found out about everything, Tess stuck her head into Ellie’s room and said, “If you want to talk, or rant, or whatever, we can do that, kid. Anything you want.”

And Ellie had said, “Why the fuck didn’t Joel tell me?” And Tess didn’t know. But it felt a little better, in that moment, that someone understood. Then Ellie said, “I’m not gay, you know,” And Tess had hesitated before she nodded. Suddenly Ellie could hear herself under hot yellow lights, choking out that she knew the right path by god, and she would never like a girl that way. She’d felt ashamed enough that she said goodnight and didn’t leave her room during Tess’ shift for a week. 

It’s that same shame that tells Ellie she’s not suffered enough to warrant any sort of revenge on her own. She’s put shittiness into the world, through the fucking interview and through other stuff, and now that’s what she’s getting back. It was always going to be this way. According to her file, which Ellie stole and read right before arriving at the Grahams’ place, she kept her first ever foster parents awake for months on end with non-stop crying. Then she wouldn’t eat her food without throwing most of it on the floor, then she didn’t learn to crawl fast enough, then she snuck into cupboards and under sinks when she finally did learn. She bit other kids in preschool, then real school as well. She got into fights and made friends or more-than-friends with an older girl who went and got herself addicted to all sorts of things. Ellie’s not good, never has been, and she thinks she’s probably come to terms with that. You get what you get, and all that bullshit.

But, despite the most recent betrayal, Ellie knows that this isn’t what was meant to happen to Joel. Somehow, he’s been dealt the worst hand possible- losing his kid, and working for the man who got her killer off with what amounts to less than half her lifetime’s-worth of penance, on top of some slightly vaguer relationship troubles (Ellie suspects she’ll never get the full Tess and Joel story, and that’s fine). It isn’t right, and while Ellie would never call herself a representative of moral correctness in any situation, it’s not as if Joel’s really in a position to do something about it. She is.

Ellie’s father doesn’t love her. She’s come to terms with that fact, she’s not five years old. But what he does love, the way a father might-should-could love his child, is his career. His presidency. He’s certain of reelection, he’s claimed- he’ll be able to push his fucking bigoted bullshit and destroy more people, and Ellie had resigned herself to watching it happen. But now this has all exploded in his face, and finally, she has the power to change something for the better. She spends days obsessing over it, and feels more certain with each passing moment. 

“The only thing that would be worse for him is if you were a drug addict, yourself!” Seth had said. 

Obviously Ellie’s not going to get herself addicted to drugs. The thought is like thinking of throwing up, the way it brings memories of hot concrete and sour smells that Ellie’s sure have sunk right into her nostrils, they’re so vivid. She can’t- and it’d be too easy to hide, anyway. Her father might not even notice, or he’d get her put into some rehab and Joel would be angry and it would all just be too painful. And she doesn’t want to hurt Joel more than she has to, even if she’s upset with him. He’s still Joel. It’s important, she considers, that there’s no way this can be framed as his fault, the way her father framed his daughter’s death. It needs to be something he can move on from quickly. It needs to be something she can do quickly, so there’s no time to regret it.

She pulls the packet of pills out from behind some books, and places it on her desk, where the light of her lamp turns the plastic a glowing yellow. Consecrated , she thinks, which seems like the sort of melodramatic thing you should think in this situation. The pills are smaller than Ellie remembers. Easier to swallow, now that she’s looking at them as a solution rather than a last resort.

She thinks back to when that girl had given her the molly back in Virginia. It takes a while to remember her name. Mona. It seems like so long ago, a lonely forever spanning between then and now, between Ellie and the friends who she hasn’t spoken to in weeks. Do they remember her name? Her face? Did they see her on the news, and know she’d been lying about her mother and the new room and the sort of dog she might get for Christmas? It’s a relief, knowing that none of that needs to matter anymore.

A less mature Ellie had reasoned that this wasn’t what Riley had been into, so it couldn’t be nearly as bad, nor would she ever use enough of it to end up like Riley did. Maybe that’s still true; she’s not ending up like her friend, because this time it’ll be for a good purpose. Riley wasn’t supposed to die, but Ellie isn’t supposed to exist. She’d been an accidental pregnancy, then an orphan, then a foster kid, then a daughter of a father who doesn’t love her, and she’s never fit anywhere in all that time. But she knows now, she thinks. Her purpose. She’s here to balance the scales, to set right one of a billion wrongs her father has done. 

When the press hear that she died of a drug overdose just days after her father made her deny her sexuality on national television, they’ll hate him. Ruin him, she hopes. It shouldn’t take long before people start spreading rumours and poking holes, all jumping on the same train and finding the court documents somewhere in the near future. He’ll be exposed as much as he can be- enough to ensure that he never sees another election. They’ll see what he did to Joel, accusing him of child neglect, and they’ll point at Ellie’s casket and show him what a hypocrite he is. A fourteen-year-old daughter, abandoned to the system for all her life, has now succumbed to the danger of drugs. And her father did nothing.

Joel, Tommy and Tess won’t understand at first. They don’t see the role she has here, and maybe Joel has given up on revenge. It seems that way. Recently, all he does- all she allows him to do- is watch her swim lap after lap of the pool, handing Ellie her towel and making sure she eats three meals a day. He’s trying to give her space. That has to be a good thing, but it makes her chest hurt to keep pretending that she doesn’t even want to talk to him. It’s becoming something that’s entirely for future-Joel’s benefit, and it takes a lot of effort for Ellie not to give up the whole thing just to speak to him properly again. She might be angry, but in her final days-- and that’s what these are, she’s decided- she often longs to talk to Joel one last time. She just has to remember that she’s trying not to be someone miss-able. It’ll only make things worse for both of them.

“Hey, kiddo,” He says, the minute she leaves her room on Thursday morning. Ellie looks at him properly for the first time in a while, recognising the cautious set of his mouth and the dark softness of his eyes. He’s ready for her to ignore him, and Ellie hates herself for creating that habit. But, she reasons, she’s about to do a whole lot of good, so that should make up for it.

“Hi.”

He seems uplifted by her reply, shit . 

“You hungry?”
“Sure.” They start walking, and the only sound for a minute is the crackle of the muesli bar wrapper.

 Not for the first time, Ellie has to blink unnaturally quickly so she doesn’t start wanting out of the whole thing. If she cries- which would be embarrassing, anyway- Joel will be kind and she won’t want to go through with it. And she has to. It’s the only way to make things right. “I’m gonna sit in on the lawyer meeting today, so you don’t need to stick around.”

“I thought you weren’t likin’ those things so much.”

Ellie has to agree. It’s a shitty way to spend her last day, but if she’d suddenly started wanting to do bucket-list activities then Joel would know something was up. It’s easier to resign herself to what’s going to happen if she isn’t having a good time, and she’d already made up her mind that Joel couldn’t be nearby. He’s too observant, knows her too well, and Ellie doesn’t want him to see it.

“They’re fine.”

“And you’re planning on bein’ there for the mornin’, or…?”

“The whole day. Lots to catch up on. You could take the day off, actually. I can use my dad’s guy.” She feels Joel’s eyes on her, and senses she’s gone too far. 

“That’s alright, I’ll stick around outside. You know I’m here if you need me.”

Don’t fucking say that when I’m trying to let go.

  Ellie makes a short, unconvincing sound of affirmation, sure she couldn’t get anything out if she tried to speak, and they walk the rest of the way in silence.

The doors are shut. Ellie should’ve been able to walk right in without looking back, knowing that Joel will remember her as cold and distant and not worth worrying about, but the doors are shut and it’s an extra moment she spends out here with him. She feels his concern, his persistence, and she can’t help it. She has to say something. 

“Joel,” She turns on the spot. “Um, thanks.”

“For what, kiddo?” His confusion is obvious. Ellie remembers a time when she couldn’t read jackshit off his expression. She fumbles for a not-too-obvious answer.

“My muesli bar, and walking me down. It was… cool of you.”

“Same thing I do most mornings, Ellie. Not a big deal.”

She wishes he wouldn’t say her name, or soften the way he is. She’s tempted to say something cruel, to end this and reverse whatever’s happened in this tiny conversation. But she can’t do that to him, the same way she hasn’t been able to force out an insult or a spiteful comment since finding out about his kid. It just isn’t the same.

“I know I haven’t seen Tommy or Tess in a while, but could you tell them I said hey?” 

Joel’s brow furrows even further. “You can tell ‘em yourself, if you want to-”

“It’s fine.” Ellie folds her arms around herself. “I don’t even know why I said that. I-”

“Ellie.” He says, and he holds her shoulders in both hands. “Kid, are you doin’ okay?”

It’s the first time in a few days that Ellie properly wavers, genuinely considers telling Joel everything and letting herself cry in front of him because she definitely will. She could tell him that she feels like the wrong kid died, because Ellie’s life has been set up for that sort of shit to happen to her and it happened to Joel’s daughter instead. She could tell him that she doesn’t know how Sarah was, but if she was anything like Joel and Tommy she can understand why it would seem so unfair that Ellie was the one who made it this far, that their family was punished while her father got everything he wanted. She could mention how not-herself she’s felt for months now, and she doesn’t know what she likes or doesn’t like and she’s not sure she’s ever fit somewhere, or if she ever could. She’d say something about how ashamed she was to do the interview, even if she never explicitly said being gay was wrong, because she knows people watched that and the poison she feels inside herself must also be growing in a hundred million other teenagers who saw what she said. And somehow she’s ashamed of the truth, too, and she’s always been such a fighter until now but something’s changed and all she does is submit to her father and Seth and everyone else. This feels like the only way Ellie can keep fighting, because she’s just too tired to do anything else. She could say all that, and more, and there’s a slight chance that it would be okay.

But it wouldn’t be fair, she reminds herself. So she nods, and steps backwards. Joel’s hands fall back to his sides.

“I- kinda feel like I should go in, before they start talking about the really important shit. Golf, and all that. You know I can’t get enough of it.”

He believes her. His lips twitch, and he rolls his eyes. Ellie hasn’t seen him roll his eyes in a long time, not in this happy-exasperated way. She’s surprised at how glad she is to see it one more time. “Yeah, yeah. Get in there, kiddo.”

It’s a good thing that he dismisses her, instead of Ellie needing to make the decision herself. She focuses on being very, very sure about that as she pushes the doors open and settles in her usual spot at the table, glancing over some of the papers that are spread out. Her father will arrive in an hour. The other old lawyers give Ellie odd looks, but don’t comment beyond warnings about grubby hands as she starts trying to read a file. 

She’s glad that Maria isn’t here, and pleased with herself for remembering to bring her own bottle of water this time. Her father arrives in a small flurry of assistants and people with things for him to sign, eyes passing over Ellie without really looking at her. But he knows she’s there, which means it’s time.

Inhale, exhale. She tries to memorise the way it feels to breathe, the sensation of lukewarm air hitting the back of her mouth, then regrets the whole idea for how phoney and dramatic it feels. Really, the entire ‘this is my purpose’ concept suddenly seems cringe-worthy, like something out of a fucking Netflix Original rather than Ellie’s mind. 

The plastic crinkles in Ellie’s pocket. Her father laughs loudly, obnoxiously. 

“You want my advice, Richard? Hold on to the wife, organise some kind of monthly allowance for the girl, and you’ll be just fine. Keep ‘em both happy while you take care of yourself, you know what I mean?” He grins broadly. “Most of those younger ones are just in it for the money, anyway. I see it as ensuring mutual benefit.” 

He slaps one of the lawyers- Richard, Ellie assumes- on the shoulder, and they clink glasses of amber liquid. When did they start drinking? It can’t be past eleven o’clock. She wonders if this is the way he spoke about her mom.

She stares, and none of them notice, her father least of all. You’re going to know how it feels, she thinks. You’re going to know what it is to have something taken from you. I’m going to show you, and you’ll regret what you did to that family. You’ll regret what you did to me, to my mom, but most of all to Joel.

Ellie had imagined her life flashing before her eyes, theatrical music playing, all the dramatic things that you sort of think should happen in your final moments. But it’s as simple as opening the packet of pills quietly under the desk, ignoring the concrete-smell and preeminent nausea and knowledge that she will have to risk going the same way Riley did, in a pool of her own sick, for this to work, and slowly placing the pills one by one on her tongue. Pill, water, pill, water. It takes four minutes, according to the clock on the wall, for Ellie to finish the packet. No time at all. 

She waits another six minutes and listens to her father talk about the woman- ‘girl’, he calls her- that his friend is sleeping with. One of the others asks if Ellie’s going to go ‘run her mouth’ about this, but the President shakes his head. “Took us a while, gentlemen, but I think we taught this one how to behave. She won’t say anything. Isn’t that right, Ellie?”

She makes a noncommittal noise, stomach churning. Is it from the pills, or listening to her father?

Then Ellie’s vision blurs, definitely from the pills, and something like panic seizes at her heart. You don’t want this, someone shrieks, but the voice sounds like her own. You don’t know what you’re doing! Riley would hate you for this.

She’s thought about that, Ellie notes irritably. Riley had always said they should die at the same time- she’d made Ellie promise it, though they were a bit younger then and had imagined the actual deaths occurring about sixty years in the future. The important bit is that Ellie’s following through, and not that she believes in all that bullshit, but in some ways she thinks it would be nice if Riley was waiting for her. She’ll give Ellie shit about what she said on TV and what she wore at Easter and they’ll fight and then everything will be right again. Nothing’s been right since Riley died, not really, and it won’t be right until Ellie’s gone too and they’re balanced again. She’s made her peace. She’s spent fucking hours, ‘making her peace’ in the past few days, sitting on her bed or by the pool and memorising all the reasons why this is what she has to do.

It sounds like you have a fucking god complex, it says. Ellie closes her eyes. Her head aches, and she chugs the rest of her water. 

She’s not doing this because she thinks she’s better than anyone. It’s because she’s the only person here who can set things right, by chance. None of that meant-to-be bullshit. Joel can’t exactly hurt the fucking president, he’d probably get the death penalty and he doesn’t seem particularly motivated anyway. She can- she can hurt her father the way he hurt Joel, the way that other monster hurt Joel’s daughter, and Ellie’s fine with sacrificing herself for that. It’s not as if she’s making the world a better place alive, anyway; she’s not exactly bringing much to the table in any regard. She never was, and not in a self-deprecating way- it isn’t like Ellie has much waiting for her, future-wise. She’s always going to be her father’s kid. She’s always- if her entire life counts as evidence- going to feel too much or not enough to cope. She’s submitted to her father once, and that’s enough for him to force her to do the same thing over and over again. She’s never going to escape this. 

She sets her jaw, feeling sweat on the insides of her palms and down her back. She wishes she’d chosen more breathable clothing.

That’s the self-centred bit, to be honest. Aside from exacting the perfect revenge on her father for everything he’s done, Ellie can’t help feeling like it’ll be a relief not to be anymore. No more nightmares, panic attacks, stretches of years feeling misunderstood and alone. She’s so tired already- fourteen years, and she knows she’s done. There isn’t a single good thing that outweighs the bad, not even -

Ellie presses her forehead to the table with a soft thud. Her skin feels like melting wax. Someone speaks, but she doesn’t know if it’s to her.

Not even Joel, and that’s new, because there was a point in time when Ellie had imagined things being okay enough with him for her to survive her father’s presidential term. But now- now she’s pulled away on purpose, stopped speaking to him and Tess and Tommy, because she understands in her very core that she’ll always be on the outside. Regardless of how much any of them care about her, Ellie’s life will always be like this. She knows herself. She won’t stay in contact after they’ve stopped working with her; won’t be able to, because she’ll never stop feeling like an imposition, an interruption in their lives. Joel is generous to do this job and be this kind to Ellie, they all are, but they’ll all be better off without her. They’ll see it eventually. They’re free of the burden she creates, the memories she forces them to relive, the sense of injustice that they must all feel. Ellie’s worked it all out: any sort of bad feeling that comes from her passing will be immediately outweighed by the justice it brings.

It’s not that they aren’t worth living for. It’s because they’re worth dying for, that Ellie can make herself do this. She can admit to herself how much she cares, and it doesn’t feel like an epiphany in any way. It’s always been true. 

Show them. Get up and show them that you give a shit, don’t let this happen. Don’t fucking die, Ellie. Don’t let him do this to you, you said you would fucking fight.

“Shut up, Riley.” Ellie tries to say into the cool wood of the table. She feels her own saliva, cold against her cheek, but there’s nobody to pick up her head, to hold it. There’s nobody but Ellie, and her thoughts and feelings and the tangled mess of everything, and then none of those things are anywhere at all.

Chapter Text

Ellie has to stay in hospital for a number of days, even after she wakes up. She sits by herself, caught between starch-white sheets with a raw throat and needle in the back of her hand, feeling like an insect trapped in a Venus Flytrap. Her skin itches, stings, and at some point a nurse says it’s because she developed hives in reaction to a medication they tried to start her on. Ellie’s not allowed to scratch- firstly, the needle in the top of her left hand pulls uncomfortably when she tries, and her right hand is weighed down by the heavy plaster-cast they’ve encased her entire arm in, all the way up to her shoulder. Somebody says she hit her arm on the edge of the table when the first seizure started, and when one of the people in the meeting room tried to hold her down, they did so with so much force that the broken bone was moved from its original position even more, damaging soft tissue in her elbow. They tell Ellie that in the four days she spent unconscious, in a coma resulting from a head wound and encouraged by the medications she’s being flooded with, she’s had a surgery. It left her with a scar down her right forearm which she’s only been allowed to see in pictures, given the cast blocking her from actually looking at it. They had to cut her skin open when they put the metal rod in, and there were complications. Nobody will expand beyond the word ‘complications’, even when Ellie tells them she can handle it. 

They do tell her that her throat hurts because they had to intubate when Ellie experienced something called ‘respiratory failure’. They pulled the tube out the morning she woke up, and it’s an entire day before Ellie can speak again without feeling like she’s going to cry.

Her hospital room is large and private, with overhead lights that are always just a little too bright. When they’re turned off- the default setting, since Ellie’s got a concussion- it’s too dark to make out even the solid shape of Joel on the couch at the other end of the room. 

He’s been here the whole time. Ellie finds it hard to think about it for too long. She finds it hard to do anything but lie here, actually, because everything’s imploded or exploded (one of the -plodeds) and she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to look at anyone again. Especially him. 

When she wasn’t too foggy to remember things anymore, Joel sat on the far end of Ellie’s bed and gave her some chilled water while he said, “We ain’t talkin’ about everything ‘till we’re back home, so you just focus on feelin’ better. I don’t want you worrying ‘bout anythin’ else. Understood?”

And Ellie had nodded, even though she didn’t and doesn’t understand any of it. It’s a sort-of-kind and very cruel rule for Joel to set before she could even argue with him about it. 

She thinks maybe she would’ve tried to bring it up if he wasn’t being so nice, now. For three days, Ellie’s waited for Joel to be cold and hard and angry, and for three days he’s sat in her room and told the nurses to bring her some real goddamned food after the fifth tasteless bowl of mush, and talked to Ellie about what Tess and Tommy have been up to in the days since she ruined things, and re-explained the rules of football when she lied about forgetting them. He tells her that several of the tabloids have agreed to settle out of court, for large sums of money that Maria told Tommy (apparently friends now) would be put in trust for Ellie once she turns eighteen. Joel says she doesn’t need to worry about the rest of the court cases. He keeps telling Ellie not to worry about almost everything.

She throws up some food and a lot of water after she has a bad reaction to one of the medications they start her on, the day after Joel notices Ellie trying not to cry over the pain in her broken arm. He makes some nurses bring her new blankets while he shouts at the doctor, which Ellie hears from her room. The guilt of it makes her nauseous all over again.

“Ain’t even your fault, kiddo,” Joel assures her later, smoothing Ellie’s hair from her forehead with a warm hand. She pretends to be asleep so he’ll stop it. He doesn't.

Ellie’s doctor is a tall man with blonde hair. He doesn’t like Joel, which Ellie supposes is somewhat fair after he’s shouted at him about medications and room temperature and every other minor issue he can find in the hospital room. 

“Ellie,” The doctor says. It’s a good thing that he’s given up trying to be Ellie’s friend- now, he actually gets to the point instead of asking useless questions about her favourite sport and music and whether she misses her father. “Some of my colleagues and I have been thinking that maybe home isn’t the best place for you right now.”

Ellie stares at her lap so the lights won’t hurt her eyes. “Okay.”

Joel breathes out harshly from his spot on the other side of her. He’s always more tense when there’s someone else here, and Ellie’s wondered if it’s the only time he thinks she won’t notice that he’s pissed about what she did. As if she could think of anything else.

“There are a few places we’ve discussed with your father; places that could give you the support you need-”
“She has the support she needs-”

The doctor turns quickly, tone souring. “Mr Miller, do I need to remind you again that you are not Ellie’s legal guardian and therefore do not have the authority-”
“Don’t I get to choose, then?” Ellie clears her throat, embarrassed by the persistent hoarseness of her voice. “I’m not my legal guardian either.”

The doctor doesn’t speak for a while. “...At your current age, that decision still rests with your parents. But I’m sure everyone will take into account what you want.”

Because that happens so often, Ellie wants to say. “Oh. Got it.” 

“So, what I was saying: we’ve found a few places that specialise in teenage drug addiction, and we think they could be really fantastic options. Very discreet.”

It takes a moment for Ellie to unpack all the other information within that sentence. Discreet is because the press will be even worse than before if they find out she’s in a rehab facility after trying to kill herself, and while her father may not have concerned himself with visiting her he will definitely concern himself with another PR incident that’s primarily Ellie’s fault. Secondly, they think she’s a drug addict, which is less than ideal. Does Joel think so as well? 

Ellie had really relied on the not-being-alive aspect of this plan to avoid thinking about its repercussions properly. The guilt and the anger and the loneliness are shadows behind walls she’s put up in her mind- Ellie’s not sure what she’ll do if she lets them all crash in on her at once. What she is sure about is that she needs to convince Joel- and probably several other people, too- that she’s not a drug addict so they’ll let her go back to the house and finish this. She’s not taking any more chances.

It feels insane to grieve her own survival the way she grieved Riley’s death. Ellie’s seen movies and read books about this sort of moment in someone’s life, after they’ve almost died and suddenly everything fits into place and they have some sort of grand revelation about an alternative path. But she doesn’t feel that way at all. All Ellie can really feel is anger at herself, at her body, for leaving her somewhere between life and death for four fucking days , only to push her in this direction at last. She’s angry that she didn’t choose to be alone when she did it, or remove herself more from Joel and Tommy and Tess before she ended it. 

Even if he’s trying to pretend otherwise, Ellie can see the weight of what she’s done to Joel resting on him. It’s in his posture, his voice, the time it’s taken him to answer her questions about what happened while she was unconscious. 

She knows he was only called into the room after she’d broken her arm. She knows he wasn’t the one who called the ambulance, that it was another security guard because Joel was the one who carried her out the back and into the vehicle before they could do a proper security screening. She knows from some of the nurses that Joel hasn’t left the room for more than twenty minutes in the week since she was brought here. She suspects he hasn’t been working at all this entire time, which is supported by the ever-changing set of guards outside the door.

It makes everything feel more unfair- Joel should’ve been able to do this for his actual kid. Joel should’ve been allowed a chance to protect her, guard her, the way he’s forcing himself to do for Ellie. She hates that he feels this obligation. She wishes she’d died so that he wouldn’t need to suspend his anger until she felt better- Ellie wishes, wishes, wishes, and still she’s in the same place she’s been for days and nothing’s changed. 

“Discreet,” Joel repeats. His voice is thick with revulsion. 

“Joel,” Ellie says quietly, overcome with culpability. She feels his eyes on her without needing to check. “It isn’t his fault.” 

The doctor shifts uncomfortably. “Of course, they can’t guarantee one-hundred per cent anonymity. There’d be a chance-”

“I don’t wanna go.” Joel and the doctor- Ellie’s starting to think she should’ve remembered his name- fall silent. She swallows. “I’m not addicted to drugs.”

“The level of MDMA we found in-”

“It isn’t because I’m addicted to it, it’s ‘cos I was trying to kill myself.” Ellie says, which isn’t quite how she wanted to go about it. She’d assumed that much was obvious.

“Well, that’s also very serious, Ellie.” The doctor says.

“Really? I thought it was a great prank.”

“Ellie .” 

Ellie looks up from her lap at Joel’s tone, feeling instantly apologetic. Her head starts to throb. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“What I meant ,” The doctor persists, “Is that maybe we should be looking at other places for you to spend some time. Places that specialise in round-the-clock care.”

“I already have that with Joel and Tess.”
“Obviously not consistently enough.” The doctor says. Ellie stares at him, suddenly furious. 

“Shit a chainsaw,” She spits. “I’m not going to a fucking Arkham-Asylum knockoff just so my dad can get me out of the way.”

“Ellie, I’m just trying to work with you here. We aren’t sending you anywhere that won’t help you with these feelings. Don’t you wish you had the space to feel a bit- well, happier?”

“If you want me to be happy, pull the fucking plug.” Immediately, Ellie knows it's the wrong thing to have said. Joel leans forward and pinches the bridge of his nose, while the doctor sighs and seems disappointed.

“You aren’t on life support.” He points out. Ellie tries not to feel embarrassed. “And that response doesn’t indicate to me that you should be heading home for the time being. I’ll let you get some rest- you can ask any of the nurses to call me if you want to talk later on. Everything’s going to be alright, Ellie. I promise.”

"Oh, well that changes everything." She says sarcastically.

He leaves the room. Silence stretches between Joel and Ellie until she doesn’t think she can take it anymore.

“It’s not ‘cos you guys weren’t there.” She forces. Joel remains unmoving on his couch. “I didn’t do it because you weren’t paying attention, or anything.”

“Sure as hell doesn’t seem that way, kiddo.” Joel breathes. 

Ellie frowns. “I swear I’m not lying. I’m not- uh, I’m not saying or feeling this shit because I don’t like my life.”

It’s harder to feel like that’s the truth when Joel gives her a Look. “Care to explain that?”

She takes a deep breath. The moments she’s spent rehearsing this speech feel fuzzy and far away. “I’m not- I- okay, fuck , um-” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I really want you to promise me that you’re gonna let me say this whole thing. Please. Just- just let me get through it, ‘cos if it’s an argument I’m gonna get- I just don’t wanna fight. Please.” 

“...Alright. I’ll listen, that’s okay.” Joel says, more gently than Ellie wanted him to. She feels embarrassingly close to tears already. “You go ahead.”

“Okay. Okay.” She blinks. “Okay.” That’s probably too many times to say that.

Joel stands and crosses the room, and Ellie almost thinks all her okayness has put him off, but he’s only turning off the light. It’s an instant relief for her aching head. 

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

She hears the couch moving as he sits down again. Maybe it’s better that she can only half make out his face in the dim, grey-ish light of the afternoon through her window. She won’t feel the rebounds of what she’s going to say.

“So, um, basically I just think this is something I need to do. Not because I’m like, fucking batshit or whatever, and not because you and Tess aren’t watching me enough or something, but- uh, I guess it’s kinda to do with Riley. Maybe. And you’re gonna think I’m insane because you know- like, I’m not trying to die the same way she did, it’s just because it was there and I needed a way. I really, really needed it to work, and it worked on her, so-” Ellie’s voice wavers and she pauses. Don’t you fucking dare cry right now. 

“Deep breaths.” Joel reminds her. 

“Uh-huh. Sorry.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” Joel says, the lie of the century.

“Okay. Um, um, right- yeah, so first of all, I wasn’t lying to the doctor. I’m not addicted to drugs, and I know that comes with the context of you knowing that I’ve smoked a bit of weed here and there but I swear, Joel, I haven’t for ages and I’d never even tried those pills before I took all of them.” Ellie takes a second to catch her breath. “I only did it because- uh, like I said- I was pretty sure it was gonna work because I haven’t seen a whole lot of people die but it sure seemed fucking effective when Riley-”

“Ellie.” Joel stops her. She should be upset that he’s interrupting, but even as she was speaking, Ellie thinks her thoughts were getting away from her. She nods and swallows a couple of times. 

“Yeah. Anyway, so, I just didn’t want you to think you’d missed signs and stuff. There wasn’t anything obvious that you should’ve seen, or whatever.” She tries to remember where she was going with this. Joel seems to understand.

“You said you didn’t do it because you didn’t like your life, Ellie.”

“Right, yeah, that’s true. Super factful, ‘cos it wasn’t like, anything to do with where I was or am or- or like, the shit with my dad and the Guslers or anything.”

That’s not the entire truth. Maybe Joel won’t be able to tell, if he can’t see Ellie’s face. 

“It was mostly ‘cos of- um, maybe- I don’t know how the fuck to say this.”

“That’s alright.”

“I don’t- I-” Ellie swears under her breath. “Marlene told me about your daughter, Joel.” As if someone’s switched off the oxygen in the room, Ellie feels everything shift. She has to rush to fill the silence. “I’m not saying this to be a dick, I just-”

“Don’t.” 

“Joel, you can’t just-”

“Ellie-” Joel says. It’s worse now than it was before.

“You said you would listen!” Ellie sits up a little straighter, closing her eyes against the pounding it elicits in her head. “You promised, Joel, you- please, c’mon, just fucking- let me say this. Please.”

Joel is silent, and Ellie decides that it has to mean it’s okay. She can’t just give up this chance to defend herself. 

“When Marlene told me what my dad did, how he defended that guy, I- I knew that there was a reason I’m here. A fucking purpose, Joel, and I know it sounds like bullshit but- but I just feel like since Riley died, something’s been wrong. You’re gonna think I’m insane, just-” She pauses and sucks air through her teeth. “It hasn’t been balanced, ‘cos Riley wasn’t supposed to die. I’m supposed to die, and I can’t- I know you’re mad and I-”

“Damn right, I’m mad!” Ellie sees the dark outline of Joel move as he gets to his feet, voice barely raised yet somehow angrier. “I’ve got a fourteen-year-old kid sittin’ here telling me she’s supposed to die, and you think I’m not going to be pissed about it? Christ, Ellie.” He paces to the window and back. “You listen, now-”

“No, you fucking listen!” Ellie’s voice breaks, and her skin hurts. “You aren’t my fucking dad, Joel, he is! And he took your kid, or at least took whatever chance you had to get justice for her, and- and he deserves the same shit to happen to him! Don’t fucking tell me I’m wrong, ‘cos I thought about it and it all makes sense. I was always meant to balance things out, I wasn’t- I’m not good like she was, Joel! I’m not your daughter, I’m fucked and I’m always gonna be fucked and the only fucking way for me to matter is if I make this right!” Ellie presses her lips together so she won’t make a sound she doesn’t want to. Everything’s falling inwards, onto her, and she can’t help but be crushed.

“You’re right. You’re not my daughter.” It knocks some of the air out of her, though she refuses to show that to Joel. 

He comes closer, and Ellie’s struck by the lack of rage painting his features. This- he’s not glaring. It seems so odd. Did it work? Did I convince him? Did I finally, finally, not fail at something?

Joel sits with his right side to Ellie, forearms on his knees. 

“But that doesn't change the fact that what you did was wrong, Ellie." Fuck. "After Sarah died, I couldn’t see the point anymore. Felt like I couldn’t go on, so I…” Joel’s jaw shifts. Ellie thinks she might be sick. “Took a gun, tried to- well, I think you know.” 

He sighs. Ellie watches him and tries to breathe normally. 

Joel isn’t supposed to say this. This isn’t what it was meant to become, he wasn’t meant to have any way of understanding. It’s much harder to convince someone who’s been where Ellie is, that she’s doing the right thing. And- and it’s so fucking awful, to imagine him that way. He’s never been someone Ellie could imagine with a gun to his head- especially not in his own hand. It’s not right. It’s not fair.

“Point is, I thought it would fix things. Kept tryin’ to come up with reasons to make it right, thought it would help everybody else. But-”

“Joel, this isn’t like that.”

“This is exactly like that.” His tone is less forgiving, now, and Ellie shrinks back. “You don’t see that, because you’re in it. But this ain’t a situation where you can convince me to let you kill yourself, Ellie, and I think you know that.”

“It’s not about letting me, I don’t need fucking permission to-”
“No, that’s enough .” He practically growls, turning to face Ellie like he’s daring her to argue. “This ain’t a debate. I let you say your piece because I figured you would’ve come to your senses by now, but clearly I had that wrong.”

“I don’t need to come to my senses! This is it, Joel, and maybe it’s not fucking pretty but it’s the way it needs to be if-”
“Ellie . You are on some mighty thin ice right now. Do not push your luck.” Joel seethes. Ellie’s somewhat alarmed by his tone, but also by the realisation that it doesn’t threaten violence the way it would from someone else. The distance she’d created between them was meant to remove any level of comfort, a lack of fear that Joel will snap and hit her, but it hasn’t. “If you think there’s any point in tryin’ to convince me that suicide is in any way an option for you, clearly you haven’t been payin’ attention. Get your head on straight, girl. Goddamn. ”

Ellie wants to cry. She wants to start screaming and rip the IV from her hand and hit her head against something until she can’t see or hear or feel. For the millionth time, she wants to have succeeded with those fucking pulls.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.” She manages. Joel huffs, unsympathetic, and Ellie feels herself flare up again. “I knew you would be a dick about this, and- and it isn’t like I even need you to get it, anyway! You’re not my fucking parent, so it isn’t your decision. This was a- a courtesy.”

Joel looks at her like she’s being ridiculous. “A courtesy.”

“Yes.” Ellie juts out her chin and stares at him. “So fuck off. I’m gonna do what I want.”

“No you’re not.” Joel says, voice low and dangerous. “I’ll tell you what’s goin’ to happen, Ellie, and you’re going to shut the hell up and hear it.”

“You can’t just-” Ellie stops, glaring at the hand Joel’s held up to silence her.

“Tomorrow mornin’, there’s going to be an evaluation of whether you should return home or to a different kind of hospital. Now, neither you or me want that to happen, but your father and the doctors will make the final decision, and regardless of my own feelings, I won’t hesitate to tell ‘em to send you away if you keep up this dumbass idea ‘bout killin’ yourself soon as you have the chance.”

“It isn’t dumb.”

“That’s mighty convenient for you to think, ain’t it?” Says Joel, in a burst of extreme southern-accent-ness. Ellie glowers at him. “Point is, we can work through this as a team- that’s you, Tommy, Tess, Frank and me- or you can work through it with some people you’ve never met. I’m not pretendin’ to know you as well as I thought I did, kiddo, but I’d bet you’ll pick the first option every damn time.”

It hurts to hear Joel say that he doesn’t know her, even though Ellie’s aware it’s her own fucking fault. “I’m not just gonna let you guys watch me all the time.”

“Do we need to call a doctor to check your hearin’, Ellie? Because-” 

“Sarcasm doesn’t look good on you.”

Joel continues like he hasn’t heard her, “-This ain’t up to you anymore. I’m not gonna install cameras, but you can be damn sure I’m done lettin’ you have the space you did before you pulled this fuckin’ stunt.”

“You’re a fucking asshole!” Ellie hisses. “You weren’t giving me space for no reason, remember? You fucking hurt me too, Joel!” 

Joel stands suddenly. “You don’t want to start comparin’ things we hid, Ellie. Where’d you get those pills, hm? Somethin’ you forgot to mention ‘fore you shoved ‘em down your throat?”
“I got them in Virginia!” Ellie says, more angrily than she probably should when she’s admitting something so terrible. “I got them on the trip you took me on, Joel, so don’t act like the whole ‘responsible adult’ thing suddenly matters! I- I take back the shit I said before, actually, 'cos you aren't fucking blame-free!” It’s unfair. It’s super fucking unfair and incredibly cruel, so Ellie does what she always does and digs herself even deeper. “Have you even thought about that? Have you ever considered that- that maybe if you’d never taken me there, none of this would’ve happened? Or- or even with this shit,” She gestures to the room around her, “That maybe if you’d told me about the shit with the fucking Instagram account more than five minutes before I had to speak to the world about it, that- that maybe I would’ve felt like I could trust you with this? Maybe I wouldn’t even have asked Marlene about your background, maybe I would’ve asked you and you could’ve- could’ve lied, probably, like you’ve been doing for so long, but maybe it would’ve stopped me from taking the motherfucking pills and- and we wouldn’t be here! Have you even considered how much of the bullshit in my life is because of you ?” Ellie closes her eyes and sees Riley. Because of you, the Ellie in her head screams at Riley. You ruined my fucking life, and left before I was allowed to be mad at you for doing it!

She doesn’t realise that she’s crying until she feels something closing in on her, and the air already feels so scarce and her skin so tight that Ellie screams and pushes it away, feels a sharp pain in her left hand and screams at that as well. Her head throbs with every breath, but she can’t stop breathing because then she wouldn’t be able to cry and crying is all she wants to do, forever and ever. 

She meant to hurt Joel, not for the first time, and Ellie wonders if this is where she’s the same as her father. She hurts people the same way he does- does he do it to hurt himself, too? Does he feel physical pain the way she does now, when he hits her or yells at her? Does he do it because people understand too much, see too much? Is she going to turn into him? Maybe it's already happened.

People who don’t smell like Joel, does she know how Joel smells?, crowd Ellie and one of them tells her to be quiet, and the high-pitched hiccuping that replaces her sobbing joins the beeping machines behind Ellie until they replace her IV- they lied, they lied, they said it would only be a pinch but this hurts- and she closes her eyes again.

Chapter Text

When she woke up and told Joel she didn’t mean what she said, he nodded and said he knew. They haven’t really spoken about it since. 

Then again, it isn’t silent the way it’s been the other times Ellie’s lashed out. She’s noticed Joel watching her, and has expected thinly-veiled anger in his posture and tone, but there’s no more than there was before. More than anything- worse than anything- he just seems tired. 

“You could’ve gone home to sleep,” She tells Joel, hours after her father confirms that he doesn’t want Ellie in an institution. She doesn’t bother pretending it’s for more than appearances. “You didn’t have to stay.”

“I know.” Joel says again, and that’s the end of it. He does up Ellie’s seatbelt in the back of Tommy’s car even when she tells him she can- she spends so long deliberating whether to be annoyed or upset or something-else about it that she misses the whole drive back to the White House.

Tommy is very quiet, though he does squeeze Ellie’s good arm when she gets out of the car. “Long time no see, honey-girl.” He says. 

“I’m sorry,” Ellie replies. She’s not sure how much it covers. She’s not sure if it’ll ever cover what she’s planning to do, and she can see in Tommy’s face that he’s realised some of it. He smiles anyway, and she leaves him standing on the gravel next to his car.

Joel steers her gently towards her bedroom. Ellie doesn’t take in the majority of the trip, and it’s only when she sees her real room, the one she’d decorated and made her own, that everything bursts into terrible clarity.

The walls, once full of posters and rude drawings and Ellie’s entire-fucking-life, are bare. The rubbish that had littered her desk and floor is gone, her sheets are stiff white cotton instead of the grey she’s always preferred. Her array of clothing is nowhere to be seen. Everything that had made this room Ellie’s is gone, leaving behind the plain beige-and-white dressing room she’d been given and her bed in the middle of it all. In a moment of panic, Ellie wonders if they’ve found the pills behind her books, only to realise that those pills are gone forever and apparently, so are the books that had concealed them.

Ellie makes a sound that is very unlike her. 

“Shit,” Joel swears lowly, an arm slung quickly across Ellie’s collarbone and pulling her away from the space. “Ellie, look at me. ” 

Another sound, more pathetic. “My room,” Ellie begs him to understand. Joel nods seriously.

“Take a breath.”

“Joel, my fucking room!” 

“Ellie. ” He snaps his fingers in front of her face, and she watches him demonstrate a broad inhale. “Like that. Do it.”

She gives it her best effort, which is difficult when it feels like a herd of elephants have just trampled her insides. 

“Good. Now, you get into that bed and stay there until I’m back, you understand?”

“My room is-”

“I know, kiddo,” He furrows his brows and looks down at Ellie, speaking more gently. “I know. I’m gonna do somethin’ about it.”

Ellie believes him without knowing why. “Okay.”

“Get some rest. There’ll be someone waiting outside, she’ll check in every few minutes but she won’t wake you. You got that?”

“Do I know her?”

“No, but she’s on your security detail. You’ll be fine.” Joel says firmly. “Get some rest.”

Ellie sits on the edge of her bed in a room that doesn’t feel like her own, and thinks about killing herself here and now. But she’s so tired, too tired even to get up and do it. She lies down on her back and allows sleep to pull her under, thick as layers of hospital sheets. 

* * *

There are still no posters in Ellie’s room when she wakes up. She abandons the warmth beneath her duvet- she doesn’t remember pulling it over herself- and pads out into the hallway.

“Hey, kid.” Tess says.

“Is Joel gone? He said someone else was gonna be here.” Ellie looks over her shoulder. It’s barely night.

“He had a couple meetings. I took over from Kim. Don’t worry about it,” Tess replies easily. “Go back to sleep.”

“My arm hurts.”
“Figures. It’s broken.” She’s cooler than usual. Ellie wonders for the thousandth time what they’ve all been saying about her. 

“Joel never has meetings.”

“Tonight he do-”

“Are you angry at me, too?” 

Tess waits a beat too long before answering, “No.”

“Don’t- can you just like, not bullshit me? Are you mad? ‘Cos everybody feels mad as shit and- and I can’t do this, if nobody’s gonna tell me the truth. Please. C’mon.” Ellie feels completely pathetic and sort of not-real. The pills she has to take so her head and arm won’t kill her make everything feel uncomfortably blurry, like being drunk all over again. 

“No, kid. Calm down.” Tess breathes in and out very intentionally. “We aren’t mad at you. Joel is- he’s mad at other things. What you did to yourself was shitty, right? We’re mad at the crap that made you do it, not at you .”

“But I made me do it. I wanted to.”

“You’re not well, kid.” She doesn’t sound like she’s saying it in an insulting way, but it hurts just the same. “When you’re feeling better, you’ll know what I mean.”

“I already know what you mean. You’re just wrong. You're all fucking- you're not even trying to get it!”

“Okay, Ellie.” Tess sighs. “Get some sleep.”

Ellie doesn’t remember how she ends up in bed again, but she thinks she’s crying when she closes her eyes. 

***

“Where’s Joel?” 

Kim, a woman who’s missing one ear and seems very, very diligent about checking on Ellie every ten minutes, shrugs. “He’s got somewhere to be.”

“Aren’t you guys meant to communicate?”

“We did. I’m where I’m meant to be, he’s where he’s meant to be.”
“I want to talk to Marlene.”

“She’s busy,” Kim says. 

“I’m the kid of the president.” Ellie insists, like an asshole. “I can do what I want, she’s not too busy for me.”

“She didn’t list you as one of the people who could interrupt her meetings, so… yeah, she is. Do you want to go for a walk?”

Ellie glares. “No.”

“Then go back to your room.” 

“That shithole isn’t my room.”

Kim doesn’t respond. Ellie returns to the shithole (that isn’t her fucking room) and wishes she could find a new way to die. She also wishes she knew where the fuck Joel is- she can’t remember how to work the stupid fucking emergency phone he left on her desk, aside from the SOS button, and she doesn’t want him to go into cardiac arrest because he thinks it’s an emergency.

Maddeningly, she can’t drift away, no matter how long she stares at her ceiling. She tries pressing a pillow to her face and only lasts thirty seconds before she’s forcing it away, gasping for air and nursing a terrible headache. She contemplates trying to drown herself in the shower, throwing herself out a window, bleeding out on the new carpeting in this fucking room, and each time she’s jolted from the fantasy by a need to speak to someone she knows beforehand. These sorts of things can’t be done without a final conversation, no matter how cliché and dramatic it feels.

“Fuck this.” She tells nobody at all. 

When she’s sure Kim isn’t on shift any longer, Ellie dons her most pitiful expression and goes out to where Tess should be standing to beg for information. It’s becoming a familiar position, only Tess isn't the one waiting in the hallway.

“Joel?” 

He looks up. “Hey, kiddo.” There’s… is it relief, in his voice? After you've been nothing but trouble? It’s fucking confusing. Ellie doesn’t try to hide it.

“What’re you doing on the night shift?”
“Makin’ up for the hours I missed today. I’m sorry, I didn't get a chance to talk about your roo-”

“Whatever,” Ellie dismisses, pretending it doesn’t feel like something awful to hear him apologise, even now. “Where did you go? Why weren’t you here?”

Not to be a dick, but the time following a suicide attempt sort of feels like the prime moment to demonstrate the whole i-give-a-shit idea. 

Ellie shakes off the selfish thought, punishing herself by curling her right hand into a fist. Her injury protests the movement so viciously that her eyes water.

“I was called into some meetings. I was just about to come and talk to you about ‘em-” Yeah, right. Ellie’s disbelief must show on her face, because Joel pauses and raises his eyebrows. “You got somethin’ to say about that, kiddo?”
She feels herself flush. “Nope.”

“Good.” He takes a short breath and looks away. Ellie tries not to spend too much time feeling happy that he’s here, but his presence is a warm towel after a cold shower. She shoudn't miss anyone like this, let alone someone who isn't even her family. It's dumb and she's spent weeks trying to cleanse it from her system- clearly, she failed.

Beat yourself up about it later, she decides. There’ll be plenty of time to let guilt and everything worse consume her when the time comes. 

“So,” Joel goes on, “Marlene thinks you need some time with a different security team. Specifically, people who aren’t me’n’Tess.”

The warmth is torn away as if the universe could sense Ellie clinging to it, and she finds herself losing balance where she stands. She presses one palm to the wall and stares at Joel. “What?”

It occurs to her that in all the fucking time she spent enjoying the fact that Joel is back, Ellie didn’t see the hardness lacing his face or the detachment in his tone. Maybe this is going to make everything worse. Maybe things will make less sense, actually, and Ellie will be pushed even deeper. Even dying doesn’t seem like it would be enough to fix Worse-Than-This.

“Accordin’ to Marlene, my… personal history with your father might be somethin’ the press dig up eventually. It could look bad.”

“For who?”

“Him. You.”

“It’ll look a lot fucking worse if I die because I don’t have-” Ellie stops herself, seeing the flaws in that argument. She hasn’t exactly proven that she wouldn’t prefer that situation. “Marlene’s full of shit. You said that. I can’t-”

There’s a gaping pause, like an open wound that Ellie can’t look away from. 

“Are you gonna let her make you go away?”

“No.” Joel says immediately, fiercely. “No, this ain’t somethin’ I’m agreein’ to just like that.” His expression softens. Worse and worse and worse. “Kiddo, what you have to understand is that it doesn’t look great for me, either. The pills, the overdose- it ain’t your fault, Ellie, but it reflects on my ability to take care of you. To protect you. If my past wasn’t enough, that in itself might be.”

“But I did it in that meeting on purpose. I did it so it couldn’t be your fault. I didn’t mean what I said, Joel, I swear!” Her voice trembles. Grow the fuck up.

Joel looks pained for a moment, then swallows and becomes somewhat impassive. “I know you didn’t, kiddo. They don’t see it that way.”

“So- so what, what, is this just happening now? You’re leaving? I- Joel, I can’t fucking do this without you. Please, you gotta change their fucking minds.” Ellie faces the wall, feeling weak the way hot tears are rolling down her cheeks. She thinks maybe she’s said too much, shown too much. But a new thought emerges at the same time- if Joel is going, if she’s going, she’d rather have said what she needed to. “Everyone- everyone I’ve ever cared for has either died , or left me. Everyone fucking except for you, Joel, so don’t fucking let them kick you out! Just tell them no!”

In the distance, Joel speaks. “It doesn’t work like that, kiddo.” 

“It has to. You gotta make it work like that,” She protests. “You have to.”

“I know. I know.” Joel says.

***

Ellie plans to go and speak to Marlene first thing the next morning, but Kim the Asshole decides she’s got to go to a session with Frank. Not that Ellie isn’t a brilliant liar, but seeing a mental health specialist as she actively plans how to Fix The World by Dying isn’t at the top of her to-do list.

“You have a new plant.” She tells Frank, who smiles and tells her to sit down on the couch in his office. The thick, pointed leaves are the length of her entire arm, seeming to explode from the homemade flowerpot. Frank sculpts and paints them- this one has red, shining strawberries on it. There's usually a story behind his paintings; if Ellie can get him going, she can probably waste a good twenty minutes on those berries. "The pot is cool. Strawberries, huh?"

“That's right. Thank you, Ellie.” No such luck. 

“Uh-huh. Did you get it from-”

“If it’s okay, I’d love to get talking about you. Lots to cover.”

“No shit. But you’ll be surprised- but I hope, supportive- to learn that I recently took a monastic vow of silence, commencing in approximately five seconds, so-”

“Ellie.” Frank interrupts gently. “No more of that, please. Come on. Just- try closing your eyes.”

“Why?”
“Because it’s an exercise I’d like to try that I think might help us both to clarify what you’re feeling and why.” He explains simply. “I’ll pass you a ball that you can squeeze with your good hand- it can help with stress.”

“I’m not stressed.”

“Close your eyes.” He urges, passing Ellie a familiar yellow ball that she can squeeze in one hand. “I won’t interrupt you. Tell me about what you’ve done since you got back from the hospital.”

Ellie huffs, leaning back and trying to make it obvious how stupid this is. “Got changed. Went to sleep. Took a dump. Met Kim.”

“Who’s Kim?”

“Joel’s replacement.” She feels the words scrape at a nerve, and squeezes the ball more tightly. “Temporary replacement.”

“Why does he need a temporary replacement?”

“Marlene’s a dick.” Ellie expects Frank to press her. When he doesn’t, she sighs moodily and provides the clarification anyway. “She wants to take Joel away because of the shit he did when his daughter died. My dad def- do you know this already? I’m pretty sure you know this already.” Still nothing. “Cool, great, thanks a lot for that response. Jesus, this is fucking stupid.” 

Frank is silent, but Ellie hears him breathing over the low hum of his heater.

She swallows, drumming the fingertips of her left hand against the arm of the couch she’s sitting on.. “My dad defended the dude who killed Joel’s daughter, so he got off with a light fucking sentence and Joel lost a whole lotta shit. He- uh, fully tried to kill himself, which is so fucked and just proves how big of a dick my dad is. Was that on his file? Do you even see his file? I don’t know if I’m like, telling state secrets here."

More silence.

"No comment? Seriously?" She huffs. "Fine. Anyway, that’s what he did. So Marlene doesn’t like that, and it’s kinda seeming like he’s gonna be gone which would just make all this shit a lot worse, and I didn’t think it could get worse. So really, what I’m saying is that you should tell Marlene I really, really need Joel to stay, whatever bullshit she thinks. She’s not actually that smart. She’s kinda an asshole. She just like, dumps shit on me and expects me to know what to do with it. Like, sorry your dad is the reason Joel tried to kill himself. Have fun with that! It’s so fucking stupid. And then obviously I’m gonna figure the rest out for myself. Like, am I dumb? No! Not to blow my own fucking trumpet, but I could see what she was saying and she shouldn’t act like she didn’t see this coming. Some fucking head of security.”

There’s a long moment, wherein Ellie simultaneously contemplates and yells at herself for contemplating that if she explains her reasoning to Frank, he might actually see where she’s coming from. It’s not like she can dig herself a deeper hole than the actual suicide attempt did. 

“Joel’s daughter was… um, I don’t fucking know, but she sounds cool. Nice. Good, I mean, like, better than me. And I’m not super good or nice or anything, and not to sound like an angsty stereotype but I’m not exactly giving a lot to the world. Joel’s kid was for him to take care of and Tommy is for him to take care of and- and maybe even Tess, I don’t know, but I know that it isn't me. I'm not for him to deal with, so he shouldn't have to, right? And there’s the shit with my dad, too, like- like, he made Joel’s life horrible, and now he’s the fucking president. It doesn’t make sense, you know? But then Marlene told me about it, and I did that speech on TV that wasn’t even true, or I don’t know if it was because I don’t know anything, and I just think my impact, and shit, isn’t doing good things. So that’s a reason. And also, I’m like my dad’s version of Sarah Miller, disregarding the obvious thing about him hating my guts and Joel loving his kid’s guts. Is that a saying? It feels gross. Forget I said that. Point is, I wanted to balance things out and free Joel from this fucking job so he can care about the people he should instead of caring about me. I’m my dad’s daughter and- and so I guess it kinda makes sense, karma-wise. You know?” 

More silence. Ellie doesn’t wait long enough for Frank to respond, anyway.

“And I figured that Sarah wasn’t meant to die, but maybe I am, ‘cos my entire life kinda feels that way. Like a death trap, I guess. I got abandoned by a mom who didn’t want me, I was small for my age in foster homes which- well, you know- I mean- you don’t know , but you get what I mean. It sucked ass. So I’ve been set up for this. I can balance things out. It’s- it’s my purpose, I guess, and not to sound all angsty and shit, but that’s pretty fucking important to me.

‘Plus, it’s only a few days until it’s been a year since it happened. With Riley. I don’t… I don’t know why it matters, too, but maybe it’s just another way of balancing things out. Because-” Because nothing’s felt right since she left. Because RileyandEllie aren’t meant to be in two different places, not like this.

Ellie tries to remember if she’s missed anything. I’m also just having a really shitty year doesn’t sound as thought-out as the rest of her points, so she leaves it out. 

“I think that’s it. But also, I guess, it wasn’t Joel’s fault. I don’t know if you have any kind of authority here, but Marlene needs to know that. And I know I said some shitty things in the hospital, and I blamed Joel, but actually I think maybe I would’ve died in like, March if he hadn’t been my security dude. So. I don’t know if that would change anything, because I think my dad’s super into the whole reputation thing and not as much into the ‘I-want-my-kid-protected’ thing, but it can’t hurt to mention. I think. Can I open my eyes?”
“Not yet. Tell me about Joel.”

“You’ve met him. I think.”

“Humour me. Why do you want him to stay here? I’m sure they could find anyone capable of looking after you.”

“They tried that. I’m a handful,” Ellie says, a mixture of defiant and guilty. “Joel… I don’t know, he gets it a little more, even when he doesn’t get it at all. He doesn’t try to be too nice to me. Not that he’s mean, I guess, although sometimes he’s a dick… that’s not the right thing to say. Fuck. I don’t know.”

“It’s fine. You said you’d’ve tried to end your life in March if he hadn’t come along. What changed, Ellie?”
“I…” And it’s not the question she’d expected, not one she’s really thought about. There’s been so much change. But when did Joel and Tommy and Tess stop being enough? When did they stop keeping you from thinking about this?

It changes the mood unpleasantly, and Ellie worries that she’s said too much. She’s been rambling, less careful than she should’ve been. She’s only used to her words getting away from her when she’s mad, but this- 

She opens her eyes and frowns at Frank. “I’m not stupid.”
“Nobody said you were.” He says calmly. 

“I’m not gonna fall for this. I’m not telling you everything about myself just because you put a fucking stress ball in my hand and tell me to close my eyes.”

“I’m not expecting you to, Ellie.”

She throws the ball on the ground, like a toddler having a tantrum. “Fuck off, Frank.” Ellie doesn’t actually want Frank to fuck off. He’s far from the worst of the adults she has to deal with. But he’s fucking nosy. “You’ve seen what’s fucking happened since- since last month, even. Everything’s fucked.”

“You mentioned suicidal thoughts in your counselling session just before Riley died. Do you remember?”

Ellie pauses. “No.”

She does, though. It wasn’t as if she went to a fucking counsellor and said I’m thinking of ending it all, she’d just made some comment about not seeing a point to life if she really had to go live with her father and his stupid family. And then three days later, Riley died in the concrete parking lot and everything changed for the worse anyway. Ellie was too consumed by grief and confusion and anger to think much about the promise she’d made to herself in a dumb fucking system-mandated counselling session. She didn’t even know Frank had access to it, let alone that the half-asleep counsellor had actually taken in anything Ellie said. 

“Even if I did,” She hurries to defend herself, “It wasn’t serious. Like, I have actual reasons now. And I know everyone thinks I’ll just make any excuse to kill myself, but this wasn’t a split-second thing. I took time to think about it.”

“How long was it? Between when you started to plan it- really plan it- and when you did it?”

The answer is hard to find. Ellie’s not certain what would be worse- admitting that she’s never not sort-of wanted to not exist anymore, or telling Frank that it was only a couple of weeks between finding out about Joel’s kid and the PR crisis, and taking those pills. 

“I’m not testing you here, Ellie,” Frank says, accurately deducing her thoughts from Ellie’s expression. “Just asking. There’s no wrong answer.”

“It’s not like there’s a right answer, either. You’re just gonna think I’m some suicidal mood-swingy teenager whatever I say.” Ellie crosses her arms as well as she can with the bulky plaster-cast. “Being lonely or sad or angry has nothing to do with this.”

“Okay. Are you those things, though?”

"A suicidal mood-swingy teenager?"

Frank breathes out amusedly. "No. Sad, angry."

 “I’m a fucking human being, dude, so yeah- sometimes. Duh.”

“Let me ask you something- if it had been Riley who your father had identified as his kid, and she’d gone through all this, would you understand her wanting to die for the same reasons as you?”

Ellie narrows her eyes. “I can see what you’re doing. Obviously it’s shitty for the people around me, I get that, but it isn’t like Riley’s gonna be impacted the same way I would be in that alternate universe. She’s gone already.”
“I’m not talking about the people around you, I’m asking about how you’d feel if you watched specifically Riley make the same decision. If she was convinced that she had a good reason to die, would you let her do it?”

"She didn't have a good reason to die."

"Imagine she did. Imagine she was in your situation, as it is currently."

“... If it was the exact same reason as I have, I would try to understand.”

“Really? You would see her life as a fair exchange for someone else’s?”
“You aren’t listening, it isn’t an exchange. I’m not-”

I’m not bringing Sarah back. I can’t bring Sarah back, no matter what I do.  

Ellie sits in silence for a long moment. Frank’s eyes are on his hands where they remain folded in his lap. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, free of judgement the way it always is. “Ellie, nobody’s asked you to die for this. Nobody wants you to die. Not Joel, which I’m sure you can see by now. Killing yourself won’t change your father’s values, his beliefs- he’s not a malleable person. He’ll use it. You can see that.”
Ellie can, but she won’t. She scowls. “It’s not just about him.”

“I agree.” Frank replies measuredly. “I think it’s mostly about you.”

“I’m not-” Ellie presses her left pointer finger and thumb against her eyelids. “I’m not doing this ‘cos I’m a selfish asshole. It isn’t all about me.”

“No, but it is about your ‘purpose’. It’s okay, Ellie, I’m just trying to get a look at this from your perspective.”

“You’re not looking hard enough!” She glances at a pillow to her right and wonders how good it would be at muffling a scream. 

Frank considers her. “I don’t think you're selfish, Ellie. Or out of your mind, for that matter. But I do think you’re underestimating how deeply it would affect the people in your life now , if you died. The people who were responsible for Joel’s daughter’s death and what happened after it should’ve had to pay, yes, but those people aren’t you. I haven’t seen Joel for more than a few minutes since you took those pills, but it’s clear as day what this has done to him. You’re kidding yourself if you think he’d feel anything close to happiness with you gone, too.

‘Your purpose doesn’t need to be balancing out something your father did, or the people he once defended in court. There’s no ‘balance’ to be created. Let yourself remember Riley- let someone remember her, with love instead of a surface-level image of a troubled teenager. Let Joel remember his daughter without feeling like you have some responsibility to avenge her. Nothing can bring them back, Ellie. Not even your death.”

Tears sting her eyes. She blinks furiously and they stay where they are anyway, until one spills down Ellie’s cheek. She pulls her feet up onto the couch and tries to keep her face from crumpling.

“Sorry.” She says, swiping angrily at the wetness under her eyes. 

“Don’t be.” Frank offers her a tissue. “Does what I’m saying make sense?”

“I dunno.” Ellie croaks. “People- people are meant to get punished. Like, karma. My dad- he’s the fucking president. It isn’t fair.”

“I think,” Says Frank, “That it’s okay to know that, and live your own life anyway. To let your father be the reason you die is passing him the last of your power, and the power of others to care about you. Don’t give him that, Ellie.”

“It wasn’t for him.”
“I know. It was for Joel, right?” She nods half-heartedly. “That’s very kind.” 

She knows Frank doesn’t agree with her, and everything feels upside-down and too-small and too-big, but the idea that someone really understands why Ellie wanted to do this means a lot. Or, whatever- a bit. She’s struggling to identify what anything means, really.

“But,” He goes on, “You have a second chance, whether you want it or not. You get to see how Joel feels about your attempt, and you have a chance to live your life with that knowledge. Do you know how many times he’s come and asked me what he can do to help you, Ellie? How many times he’s asked me about ideal daily routines, whether you’re hurting too much to handle it, whether he should be feeding you more or asking you more questions about yourself?”
Ellie stares at Frank, now hardly bothering to keep her skin from blotching or her eyes from watering. “...No.”

“Most weeks since April. Nearly every day of August.” He offers Ellie a kind smile. “Paying attention to things… it’s how we show love.”

“...I didn’t know he did that,” She manages. Frank nods his understanding.

“It’s okay that you didn’t. He’s not an open book, either- you two have that in common. But I can see that he’s terrified of losing you, of hurting you. Dying wouldn’t fix what he lost when Sarah passed.”

Ellie looks down and watches two identical tears fall parallel to one another, onto her sweats. “I don’t know what to do,” She says shakily.

“At risk of sounding like a clîché, take it one day at a time. I’m not saying there won’t be bad days- it’s uphill from here. But you have people who want to go through it with you, now.”

Ellie thinks suddenly of the hike, that last afternoon by the lake. The uphill climb that she’d expected to end with a view or a tourist attraction, but really only finished when they’d had enough of walking. She tries to recall the way the afternoon sun felt on her arms, her face, and the way the dappled shadows of trees made everything feel more alive. She remembers the thrilling satisfaction of learning to swim, the easy relaxation that came from teasing the adults and getting the same back, herself.  Ellie had been so much happier then. The closest she’d ever been to Joel, Tommy and Tess. Away from her father. It was the first time she ever thought that summer might be her favourite season, without broken AC units and soured milk and hot concrete. Joel had climbed the hill with her, then. Would he do it again?

“But Marlene’s taking them away.”
Frank gives her a knowing look. “Something tells me Joel isn’t going down without a fight. Another way you two are similar.”

* * *

Kim seems to understand that she’s not going to win any arguments with Ellie when she emerges from Frank’s room, heading straight for Marlene’s office without a word. 

“You should eat some lunch,” She says, matching Ellie’s pace easily.

“You should eat an elephant’s dick, Kim,” Ellie retorts, then regrets it. “Sorry.” 

They get to Marlene’s office and it’s a much less dramatic entrance than Ellie would like. She’d have preferred there to be several significant people there- her father, at least, and his family, along with the adults Ellie actually likes and possibly an assortment of religious figures for good karma. Instead, she gets Marlene sitting across from a man in a suit who is signing a pile of papers almost as tall as he is. Marlene looks up.

“This isn’t a good time.”

“That sucks.” Ellie waltzes in and looks down at the suit man with her most asshole-ish expression and crosses her arm (The one in the cast doesn’t want to comply). “Hello. Your meeting is over. Come back later.”

“I’m afraid this-”

“No need to be afraid, dickwad, just move.” 

He looks at Marlene, who sighs and nods, looking slightly bored. He stands and hurries from the room, closing the door behind him. Marlene looks at Ellie expectantly- she starts to feel a bit stupid. 

“I-I don‘t have a speech.” She says awkwardly. “I just don’t want you to fire Joel and Tess and stuff. You can’t do it.”

At that, Marlene’s eyebrows furrow. “I don’t adjust my plans without reasons, kid. I-”

“I know, the shit with Joel’s kid and public appearances and the fucking suicide attempt!” Ellie almost shouts, “That isn’t a fucking reason! It’s all- none of it’s gonna affect anything, he’s in the Secret Service, not the Everyone’s-fucking-business Service! Just don’t tell them who he is!”

“That isn’t how this works. And those aren’t the only reasons why Joel’s being removed.”

“What the fuck else could there be? Another daughter? There’s nothing that’s gonna make me cool with this.”

Marlene is unaffected by Ellie’s declaration. “Your being ‘cool with it’ is the entire reason I made this happen, kid. I asked if you could see Joel’s past becoming a problem, and you responded that it was already a ‘massive fucking problem’- to quote your own description.”

“Not- not because I didn’t want him here, it was because it was fucking shitty that his kid died and my dad defended the murderer! You didn’t wanna ask for clarification?” Ellie sort of wants to rip her hair out. Your fault, your fault, your fault. “ Jesus fucking christ, I can’t actually-”

“I treated you like an adult because that’s the way you asked to be treated, Ellie. I didn’t think comprehension skills would be a problem.”

It’s a slap in the face. The constant chant of your fault sounds like too many people Ellie knows, herself and Tess and Riley and Joel “It wasn’t a comprehension-”

“It’s irrelevant, kid. Joel and Tess’ positions have both been suspended until the end of the trial, when they’ll be reassessed and we’ll figure out whether they come back full-time.”

“The end of the trial? What does that even mean- what, like, years ?” Her voice becomes borderline hysterical.

“Weeks. You’ll still have security guards.”

“But-” Ellie starts, but can’t finish the sentence. ‘ But I’ll die’ sounds a bit melodramatic, no matter how true it feels. ‘ But I need them’ is childish. ‘ But I just started to figure things out’ might make Marlene laugh at her. “I thought you were big on telling me things. How come I didn’t know about this?”

“I’d already scheduled a meeting for later today, now that things are finalised. You’re just early.” Marlene replies. It doesn’t feel like an answer. "Leave my office, Ellie."

"Fuck you." 

* * *

On the anniversary of Riley’s death, Ellie allows herself to go back to the park for the first time in weeks. Kim follows at a reasonable distance, waiting outside of the dreamy shadow cast by the willow tree. Ellie sits on the bench and doesn’t cry for two hours.

She tries to remember what Riley’s voice sounded like, moulding it into the shapes of the words she wants to hear. I would’ve wanted you to die, be all poetic and shit, the fake-Riley says. Ellie can’t match it to the real one. Half the words sound unnatural and the other half are stolen from sentences she memorised when Riley said them. 

She doesn't feel like herself, still, only maybe now it's more because she doesn't have people who know her to remind her who that is. Ellie's not sure if she's suspending her own death because she's waiting to speak to Joel again before it happens (selfish) or waiting for him to convince her not to do it (also selfish) or just because she misses him (pathetic). Either way, the absence of the solid presence at her side, telling her to wear sunblock or eat breakfast or whatever bullshit, feels more pronounced when the distance isn't her decision. She wakes up in the middle of the night and feels like she's dying- more recently, Ellie's struck by the realisation that that can't happen now, which is remarkably inconvenient. Even more inconvenient is the fact that she isn't really, truly dying; it's fucking anxiety.

It's stupid to miss someone who worked for her, and it's stupid to still think that's all Joel is. Ellie's trying to be less of that- she wishes there was someone to tell her which direction her newfound common sense should take her in. Should she stop thinking up stupid puns, only to realise that nobody's listening? Should she write them down for Joel to hear when he comes back? Will he even want to hear them, after all the trouble she's given him? She can't figure out why he'd stick around if he wasn't obligated; whatever kind of desire to protect her that Joel had before must've been damaged a bit by her attempt to do the worst thing she could to herself. She wishes she could ask him. She wishes she could be near him- somehow, Ellie felt safer contemplating her own death when Joel was nearby, than contemplating her life when he isn't.

It's not only him, either. Tess is gone. Late nights feel more prison-like when all Ellie can do is stare at the bare walls of her room. Even the constellations on the ceiling were painted over. She only has one of the three left, and he's hardly going to want to-

“Howdy.” Tommy arrives as if summoned, joining Ellie on the bench. She looks at him with wide eyes.

"Tommy."

"That's it- thought you mighta forgotten, all this time since we had a talk."

Guilt rushes through Ellie like a bucket of it has been poured over her head. “Sorry,” She says. Tommy shakes his head. 

“Nothin’ to apologise for, hon. Just wanted to check in, see how you’re doin’. Didn't say a word on the drive over.”

“I thought you would’ve gone, too,” Ellie says, because it’s the truth. She’d been so relieved to see Tommy in the front-seat of the car that she hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to say. “I thought you would go with Joel and Tess.”

“Now, why would I do that? And waste all the popsicles I stocked up on while you were in hospital?”
Ellie thinks she manages something resembling a grin. “It’s too cold for popsicles.”

“Because that’s likely to stop you,” Tommy returns the expression tenfold. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. ‘Sides, Joel’d kill me if I didn’t stick around to keep an eye on you, sweetheart.”
“He asked you to do that?”

“Didn’t have to, but yeah.” Tommy nods and spreads his arms along the back of Riley’s bench, leaning back. “He’s real worried. Pissed off, too- not at you,” He hurries to explain at Ellie’s expression, “At Marlene, for not lettin’ him tell you himself or even see you again ‘fore he left.”

“When did he find out?” It feels like asking Tommy to tell her a secret, but Ellie has to know if Joel’s been keeping this from her the same way he kept the Instagram thing. 

“Night before you did. He wanted to tell you, kid, he really did.” Tommy gives her an apologetic grimace. “Just couldn’t.”

The angry part of Ellie wants her to say that Joel could’ve, should’ve, tried harder. He should’ve been there when she spent hours on the floor of her not-room after Marlene dropped the news, patting her on the shoulder and pretending a muesli bar or a burrito would fix it. At this point, she thinks one of them might. 

“Why hasn’t he messaged me on the security phone?” Ellie leaves out the part where she hasn’t messaged him, either.

“It’s Marlene’s until he’s back on the job.” Tommy confirms her suspicions. “But he asked me- ordered, more like- to tell ya that he’s workin’ on comin’ back as soon as he can.”

It feels like an empty promise in the face of Marlene and Ellie’s father’s power. They could fire Joel and Tess and never let them see her again, if they wanted to. “Right,” Ellie looks at her knees and sandwiches her hands between them.

“Don’t lose hope, Ellie-bellie. Alright? I know it’s not that easy, and you’re goin’ through somethin’, but there are people waitin’ to see you again. Don’t forget that.”

Ellie wonders if she’s going to spend the rest of her life- however long it ends up being- staying awake for other people. Will she ever be enough to sustain herself? Will her own thoughts ever stop circling back to the conclusion that she’s supposed to be gone? It seems selfish to rely on people around her for that. It seems even more selfish to end all this before she can speak to those people. 

“You’ve done this before,” She realises. Tommy blinks and looks away properly for the first time. Her chest hurts.

“I have.”

Feeling like a horrible person and a useless child all at once, Ellie asks, “Did you say the same thing to Joel?”

“I got around to it,” Tommy replies. “I was angrier- didn’t understand it, back then. Made my fair share of mistakes. Not to say I’ve got a mighty solid grasp of the whole idea now, either.”

“I said some fucked-up stuff to Joel before we left the hospital.” She admits, feeling that it’s only fair to be honest with Tommy when he’s telling her his shit. “I blamed him. Is it gonna make him feel that bad again?”

Tommy shakes his head kindly. “Joel’s well past that place in his life, Ellie. An’ he knows you only said that shit because you’re still in it. Ain’t blamin’ himself more than he already was.”

Ellie sinks lower on the bench. Her face prickles unpleasantly. “I don’t know why you guys all put up with it.”

“Put up with what?”
“I dont kn- uh, me. Maybe”

Tommy sighs, long and deep. “It isn’t a matter of ‘puttin’ up with you’, hon. It’s takin’ care of you the same way we all take care of each other.”

Ellie’s not sure what to answer that with. She wants to say, but you’re all each other's family, but that would sound like she’s fishing for something. She would be fishing for something, and the possibility that she’d be rejected or denied is slightly too humiliating to consider. Not one of them- a judgement, an assumption, she’d made to keep herself from getting too comfortable. It’s not fair to go messing it up now.

“Hold on ‘til Christmas, alright?” Tommy is saying. “Just a couple months. I’ll be around to talk, and I’ll tell Joel and Tess whatever you want to say to ‘em. We’ll make it work, hon. I swear it. You just gotta hold on.”

He sounds more worried than Ellie’s ever heard him, so she really has no choice but to agree. Christmas seems worlds away. 

She has a sudden vision of a funeral, the sky slate-grey and threatening rain the way it did at Riley’s. Black dirt being piled on a shiny brown coffin, just a little longer than Ellie’s body. The scent of it, all around her, earthy and whole. The peace of every sound being blocked by crushed red velvet and burl wood. Her father’s face. The flash of cameras. The car, parked on concrete- concrete that smells like Riley's body .

Ellie swallows harshly, digging her fingers painfully into her jeans. Stop it.

Joel, Tess, and Tommy’s faces. Pictures of Ellie in every newspaper, rumours about her, rumours nobody bothers to stop because there's nobody here to care about her-

And she won’t have brought anyone back. There will only be more hurt and pain and grief. She and Riley will lie buried in separate graves, lonely in death as in life, and the world won’t be balanced again. It probably never was.

“I want those popsicles.” Ellie says quietly. Tommy snorts.

“Better come see me soon, then. Tell me all about how annoyin’ your new security team is.”

“So fucking annoying .”

“M-hm. Bet Tess’ll love to hear that, kid.”

Ellie smiles without meaning to. “Good. Tell Joel, too. Kim has even less of a sense of humour than he does.”

Tommy shakes his head. “C’mon, now. We both know that ain’t possible. Just you wait 'til Christmas.”

Chapter Text

The Ellie Williams of October is remarkably mature about everything. She goes to her sessions with Frank, eats at least one meal a day, and barely even thinks about how nice it would be if everything went away. She’s doing fucking amazing, given the circumstances. 

That’s why it’s increasingly frustrating that the universe seems determined to ruin things. Namely, by having a spontaneous visit to Tommy’s garage (it actually belongs to the White House, but whatever) end in Ellie uncovering said chauffeur and her favourite lawyer (not saying much) halfway undressed in the back of his car.

“What the fuck?” Is the unanimous reaction.

Ellie is promptly ordered in a very Joel-ish tone to come back in two minutes and not a goddamn second sooner, which she does without much argument (she's too busy gagging). Tommy’s still stuffing his shirt back into his jeans when she’s finished counting to one-hundred and twenty. 

“What the fuck?” She says again, slightly more calmly. “You guys are boinking?”
“‘Boinking’?” Tommy snorts. Ellie, in an act of revenge for being yelled at when she found them, gives him a Tess-ish glare. He relents. “I’m sorry, darlin’, didn’t realise you’d be comin’ round today.”

“Don’t call me that.” Ellie scowls. “You aren’t meant to be doing this. You- you’ll get the seats gross and then I’m gonna have to sit in bodily fluids for the rest of-”

Tommy and Maria make faces of varying disgust. “Ellie, we weren’t going to-”

“You don’t get to talk, fake lawyer.” She crosses her arms. “You’re supposed to be winning my fucking legal case so I don’t need to hang out with Kim anymore! No offence, Kim.”

“None taken,” Kim says from her position near the door. Tommy is turning increasingly red. 

“I’m on my break,” Maria cuts across him as he opens his mouth. “I’m not wasting any time. We’re winning the case.”

“Well, duh.”

“So what’s the issue?” 

Ellie looks between them, mouth open in indignation. “What's the- this is the issue! You guys don’t even exist in the same fucking universe! You don’t know each other!”

“Sure felt like I knew her a second ago,” Tommy smirks. Ellie steps on his foot.

“Shut the fuck up. This sucks. You both suck. I want my popsicles.”

She charges past a hopping Tommy and a sighing Maria towards the room that drivers use for coffee, uniform changes, and meals. Tommy’s started keeping a box of popsicles there for Ellie to snack on when she comes to visit, an increasingly frequent occurence in the three weeks since Joel and Tess left. Or, were banished. Whatever. 

“God hates me,” Ellie moans at the sight of the empty box. Tommy, limping behind her, clicks his tongue and pats Ellie’s shoulder. She is very tempted to throw his hand off and still doesn’t do it. Super-fucking-mature.

"Thought you didn't believe in god."

"Well, there must be some reason everything goes wrong. Nobody in the history of planet earth has ever suffered on this scale."

“I’ll buy some more this afternoon, hon.” 

“Keeping an empty box in the freezer is false advertising. Why am I even here?” She hears the groan of the black leather couch as Tommy sits in it, stubbornly ignoring the tap-tap of his hand where he wants her next to him. “No. I’m not talking to you right now.”

“Ellie. C’mon.”

She faces him, still frowning. “You’re such an asshole for sleeping with my lawyer.”

“She ain’t your only lawyer,” He clarifies, “And she’s workin’ hard. I’d never take her away from that, kiddo- you know it, too.”

“Didn’t look like you guys were exactly keeping track of time,” She mutters.

He sighs. “That’s enough. Come and sit.”

Tommy has decided that in Joel's absence, it's suddenly his job to become serious about stupid shit like Ellie's moods, or Ellie's desire to try driving one of the cars while he's in the bathroom. She is unimpressed; you can't really take someone seriously when you've seen them in a cowboy hat and board shorts. 

“I decide when it’s enough. That shit is so weird, Tommy! What the fuck do you even have in common?”
“That’s our own business, kid, we-”
“-And it doesn’t even make sense, you’re like, twenty years older than her!”
He looks mildly offended. “No I ain’t.”

“You’re almost fifty!”

“That was somethin’ I shared in confidence- and I don’t damn look it, so you-”

“She’s like, thirty. That is twenty years, you pedophile.” Ellie really doesn’t know why she’s worked up about this, actually. It probably doesn’t matter at all, but her hair wouldn’t lie flat this morning and Kim’s as boring as ever and now her lawyer is sleeping with her driver. So. 

“C’mon, now.” Tommy runs a hand through his hair tiredly. “That’s enough o’this bullshit.”

“Is she mature for her age, Tommy?”

“Ellie. Goddamn, honey, what has gotten into you?”

She hesitates to continue arguing. This certainly doesn’t feel like something worth spending much more time on, now he mentions it. Not mature behaviour. 

“I never pretended I was a morning person,” She tries.

“It’s four in the afternoon.”

“An afternoon person, either, if you had let me finish.” 

Tommy leans back, his hands linked behind his head, and tries to give her a Look. It is nowhere near as intimidating as Joel on a bad day, but Ellie has to give him pity-props for the effort. 

“I was talkin’ to my brother yesterday,” He begins. 

“Breaking news, siblings interact. More at seven.” Ellie deadpans. She stares at the ceiling and tries to decide which country the yellowish stain on it most closely resembles. “I wanna watch Grown Ups.”

“He said he wanted to speak to you sometime, if you’d like that.”

“Although Grown Ups 2 kinda has a good vibe as well-”

“Ellie, would you listen-”

“Maybe a marathon?” She looks at Tommy expectantly. He stares back, and she huffs. “I don’t wanna call Joel.”
“Why not?”

There are a trillion embarrassing sentences starting with ‘because’ that spring to the front of Ellie’s mind. She shakes them off.

“ I wanna watch Adam Sandler movies instead. Duh.” She supplies. Tommy’s wounded feelings are easy to ignore, and she knows he’ll make an excuse for her anyway. Part of being mature, Ellie reasons, is eliminating all potential situations where she might act like a little kid.

“...Alrighty, then.” Tommy says after a long pause. They watch a shitty movie and Ellie pretends she’s not going to regret turning him down.

***

Because he considers it devil’s worship, Ellie’s father doesn’t host anything for Halloween at the White House. She uses Tommy’s credit card to order a Satan costume and walks around the building in it, which earns her three days in her room with nothing to do but eat bread and drink water (and ‘repent’, though she doesn’t do much of that in true method acting form). Tommy’s mad, too, given that it was technically theft to buy the costume without his knowledge, but he feels too sorry for Ellie to do anything when she comes to visit him in early November. 

“You doin’ okay?” He asks. She’s trying very hard not to be quieter than usual, but three days alone- excluding Kim’s hourly suicide checks- doesn’t do a lot of good on the mental health front. It felt alarmingly similar to the Hole back at the Kwongs’.

“Uh-huh.” Ellie reaches for her iced lemonade and enjoys the extremely non-bread-ish flavour. “Super cool. Thanks for the food.”

Upon hearing about her time in solitary (maybe a dramatic name for a White House bedroom), Tommy ordered almost the entire menu of a nearby fast-food place. He’d been set on healthier options, but was persuaded otherwise quite easily. 

“Ain’t a problem, sweetheart.” He replies. “Hey, just remembered- I got a surprise for you, if you’re up for it.” 

Ellie does not feel very Up For It, and Tommy definitely didn’t ‘just remember’, but she forces herself to nod anyway. “Sure.”

“I’ve gotta go grab ‘em- wait here, alright? I’ll only be an hour or so,” He says. She frowns.

“Where are you going?”

“Joel’s place; s’where it is. I won’t be long.”

“Is the surprise Joel and Tess?” Ellie keeps her voice carefully uninterested, though her ribcage suddenly feels a bit too small. Tommy’s face falls a bit.

“They still aren’t allowed access, hon, so… no. But I promise you’ll like it.”

“Is it a dinosaur?” Ellie asks, then feigns disappointment. There’s little room to think about the real ache beneath it. “Wait, shit, no- Joel can’t be here on his own, either, can he?”

Tommy smirks. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”

True to his word, Tommy is back within an hour, which gives Ellie time to rewatch her favourite parts of Star Wars- he showed her the original trilogy for the first time a few days ago. She’s very very Normal about it and if Tommy hadn't taken his credit card with him, she would not have stolen it again to order a lightsaber.

“Close your eyes,” He says upon entry.

“No, fuck off. Show me what it is.” Ellie demands. He obliges. There’s a long pause.

“What d’you think?”
“Holy shit,” She breathes.

It’s her posters- not exactly, though, because these are missing the lines from being folded and moved too many times, or Ellie’s mindless doodles, or stains from various liquids. But it’s the whole set of them. There’s the Deftones one she stole from an older kid at a temporary placement, her the bends poster, the Savage Starlight one she’d saved up for with money from braiding other girls’ hair- after practising on Riley, Ellie was pretty good- and the Mortal Kombat II one she stole from a games store just before Riley’s funeral. They’re all there, only they’re glossy and perfect and-

“Joel figured it might make you feel better to have your old room back, so he ordered these. Shippin’ took ‘bout a hundred years, but-”

Tommy is cut off by Ellie squeezing all his remaining air from his body in a hug. It’s equally unexpected for her as it is for him- she’s hardly been the cuddly sort, until now- but it’s just to hide her face.

“How the fuck did he remember all of them?” She says into the softened fabric of Tommy’s flannel. “How did- why-”

“I’ll tell him you think they’re fine, then.” Tommy chuckles, patting Ellie’s back. “Glad you like ‘em, honey. I wouldn’t’ve had a clue where to start.”

She pulls back and swipes a hand roughly across her face. “Tell him I said thanks. They’re pretty cool.”

“Will do, Ellie-girl.” Tommy grins and ruffles her hair. Ellie’s tempted to say something mean so he doesn’t have that sappy Christmas movie look on his face, but finds she’s unable to form a proper sentence the minute she re-examines any of the posters. 

Not that Ellie’s rude pictures of White House staff and the first family don’t create a lovely ambiance in her room, but she’s quite pleased to replace them with something that actually feels like her own. Tommy borrows some tape from Marlene’s office (Ellie isn’t sure how he escaped alive)- because fuck the paint job on her walls- and she spends most of the afternoon arranging all the posters in various configurations until she settles on something that feels like her own. For the first time in weeks, months, she feels like herself in a space that is her own- it’s a relief, more than anything else. Ellie didn’t remember how nice it was to lie in her bed and not imagine sinking into the dark, unhappy depths of it, until now. 

It rains in the evening, grey-green and thundering. Ellie has a shower and sits by the heater in her presidentially-approved room to dry her hair. She remembers how to draw a few things; the moths that Riley had always pretended she wasn't scared of when they beat their wings against the walls of their room, late at night. Carolina chickadees, little birds that Ellie used to see on primary school field trips when the grass was dewey and she didn’t know what to worry about except the names of the birds she saw. The outline of a pale green tree against the warm frame of a window in a wooden room in Virginia. 

She’s not happy ; Ellie can’t feel that, even when she really tries. But she thinks maybe it’ll be easier- that time will pass more quickly, from here. She’ll keep drawing and trying to feel like herself, and soon it’ll be Christmas and she’ll be alright again. She has to be alright.

***

There’s a death threat against Ellie in late November that makes everyone worry a bit more than they should, in her opinion. It’s no secret that people want her dead- even she’s included in that number, occasionally, so it’s not such a big fucking deal. 

It has its perks, increased security being one of them, which Ellie didn’t think she’d ever truly see as a positive. It means that Joel and Tess are stationed around the house’s perimeter, still not allowed to be assigned to Ellie, specifically, until the case is completely wrapped up. She starts carrying around her emergency phone again anyway. Lawyers keep telling Ellie that they want to negotiate a higher settlement, from thousands into millions, and despite Maria’s best efforts the case won’t fucking close. But they’re here. Walking distance, even if Ellie’s hardly allowed to leave the house anymore. That’s something. Another perk is that in all the excitement, her fifteenth birthday passes unnoticed- the same as her fourteenth did. She doesn’t visit Tommy for the few days surrounding it, just in case, and when he tries to bring it up Ellie shuts down the conversation immediately.

As less of a positive, the transition towards Christmas festivities means that David’s reappearance is imminent. Ellie tries not to think too much about it, more focused on ‘accidentally’ bumping into Joel or Tess when she visits Tommy, but she’s reminded at every turn that she has to be on her ‘best behaviour’, whatever the fuck that means to Christine.

“You won’t be expected to make any public appearances- safety reasons,” The first lady explains, examining Ellie’s walls with thinly-veiled distaste. “But even within these walls, you need to maintain the image of this family to our guests.”

“I’ll get to ordering my white pointy hood as soon as I can,” Ellie deadpans. “Can I opt for pants, or is it still the white dress that goes with it?”

“Those are exactly the sorts of comments I mean,” Christine says. 

Ellie rolls her eyes. “It was a joke.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Wouldn’t want to upset the botox. I get it, dude.”

Having evidently decided it’s the cleanest spot, Christine perches on the edge of Ellie’s bed and stares at her. It’s almost as unnerving as the visit was in the first place. “Your godfather will arrive next weekend.”

“Can’t wait.” 

“Sarcasm, young lady, is-”

“Christine, why are you here?” Ellie huffs. “I haven’t done anything since Halloween, except be threatened with my own death- and that’s like, barely even my fault!”

“I didn’t come to speak with you about-”

“Then what is it? ‘Cos I was talking to Dr Daniela Star and we were getting pretty fucking deep, so you kinda interrupted.”

“Who is that?” Christine snaps.

Ellie points at the Savage Starlight poster. “Duh.”

“Don’t use that word. You should always be aiming for a more sophisticated vocabulary. In fact, I-”

“Christine, man, the fuck is this?”

She mutters something that resembles incapable of polite conversation, and glares at Ellie. “Your godfather has requested to spend one of the days of his visit counselling you privately- after what happened in September, it’s clear you need extra guidance from a God-honouring individual.”

There’s a short silence. The walls feel less solid.

“Of course,” Christine goes on, staring at the wall instead of Ellie, “There’s no telling how busy you’ll be around Christmastime.”

It occurs to Ellie that it’s highly unusual for anyone to tell her about these things ahead of time, and that it’s possible her father is unaware of Christine’s visit. She shifts uncomfortably on her bed. “I will?”
“Naturally. You’ll have schoolwork to complete, won’t you?”
Ellie hasn’t told anyone that she didn’t re-enroll in school, mostly because she suspects Joel would be quite cross about it and she doesn’t want to deal with any lectures when he gets back. Nobody else seems to have noticed- if Tommy ever asks how it’s going, she assured him it’s fan-fucking-tastic (which she’s sure it is, for the sophomores who actually started classes). 

“Heaps,” She lies. Christine nods primly.

“Exactly what I thought.”

Another silence. Ellie watches the woman curiously. “....Christine, why’d you come and warn me about this?”

“Warn you?” Christine titters, adjusting a piece of hair towards the back of her head. How the fuck did she feel that it was crooked? “I run this household, Ellie, it’s my job to clarify plans around the holiday season for all its members. I’ll reduce David’s counselling to an evening session, with your security personnel present.”

Ellie’s suddenly sure that Christine knows exactly what sort of person David is. Without liking the woman in the slightest, she feels a vague need to say ‘thanks’ or some bullshit- that is, until she looks at her properly and reminds herself of all the other things she’s watched happen without saying a word. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Right. I have meetings to get to, so I can’t stay.”
“I’ll try not to cry myself to sleep about it.”

“Goodbye, Ellie.”

“See ya.” Ellie rolls over and doesn’t watch her leave. It’s more likely that she’s ‘protecting’ Ellie from David because she doesn’t want an assault charge to deal with after the other shit this year, but it’s nice to imagine a world where Christine did it because she actually has a conscience. It would certainly make her more interesting. 

The unusually heavy snowfall that opens December seems to saddle Ellie with familiar weights. She’s angry at herself for letting it happen, when she’s been so determined to be completely better when Joel comes back, but sometimes it’s just so much easier to let herself stay in bed and think about Things than to push through for the sake of some far-off reunion. She can’t go outside anymore- not that she did much before, but still- and there’s nothing to occupy her but visiting Tommy or drawing. She does quite enough of both to become properly tired. 

“Cold weather gettin’ to you?” Tommy asks. “Need to eat more, hon- get some extra padding to keep you warm.”

“They make clothes for that.” Ellie sighs. Through too-thin socks, her toes are numb from cold, matching her mind’s patterns for the morning. Maybe she just needs to go somewhere warmer. Maybe the numbness is a good thing; when she’s into it, it’s harder to remember why she wanted to get rid of the feeling.

“I’ll turn up the heat,” Tommy says. He groans as he stands- his old injury gives him more grief in this weather. 

“It’s fine.” Ellie tucks her feet under herself and squints at the blurred outlines of snowflakes through the steamed-up office window. “Have you ever thought of going on vacation?”
“I did, just a few months ago. Remember?”

“You mean Virginia?” He nods. “That wasn’t a real break. I was there.”

Tommy tuts. “Well, shit. Sure felt like vacation to me, but you do bring a strictly professional attitude to-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ellie smiles involuntarily, throwing a pillow at his head. He throws it back, and they’re briefly engaged in a mock-fight (a resounding win for Ellie when Tommy knocks over his own coffee cup) before he disappears to make himself a new drink and promises to bring back something worth eating. When he does- the liar, it’s just pumpkin soup- Ellie rephrases her question. “I mean like, somewhere tropical, or something. Vanuatu.”

“Nah, never been somewhere like that. I mean- shit, I was in Florida for a few months. That count?”

“Florida? Nope. Strictly no US states allowed.”

“Then, no. Haven’t been on vacation. Why’d you ask, honey? You plannin’ a trip I don’t know about?”
“I wish. Cold weather pisses me off.”

Tommy gives her a crooked smile. “Don’t I remember you sayin’ somethin’ similar about hot weather in summer?”
“Maybe I’m a chronic weather-hater. I can do sixty-five degrees, cloudy, and that’s it,” Ellie decides.

He laughs. “Sounds boring as hell, f’you ask me.”

“You’re boring as hell,” Ellie retorts automatically. Tommy feigns a stab to the heart, then gets to his feet once more.

“Not that I ain’t enjoyin’ this talk, kid, but I actually gotta be somewhere.”

“What?” But you’re my driver sounds a bit childish. 

“I got a date.”

“With Maria?”
“That’s the one,” Tommy grins. “Who else?”
“Maybe one of my other lawyers. You could have a thing for Bruce O’Meagher, I dunno.” Mr O’Meagher hates Ellie with a passion since she suggested he pursue retirement instead of this case. 

Tommy makes a disgusted sort of face and puts on his jacket. “I’ll stick with Maria, if that’s alright with you.”

Ellie tries very hard and only feels slightly abandoned. “I’ll allow it.” 

***

David arrives, as slimy as ever. Ellie’s throat closes at the same time David’s hand does around her upper arms, and bruises that faded months ago seem to spring into being once more. He kisses her cheek and she feels branded. She spends four hours sitting in the space between the wall of her bathroom and the toilet, ignoring Kim’s mandatory check-ins in favour of focusing on pushing away her nausea and the terrified panic that it brings up with it. She’d hoped that her fear of throwing up would magically disappear, but no such luck- it’s weird, since Ellie’s so fucking lucky usually.

She manages to avoid him for a few days, forcing Kim to accompany her to the indoor pool for swimming practice that conveniently washes any trace of David off her skin whenever his hand grazes her in passing. He skulks around the house and laughs loudly enough at dinners that Ellie can sometimes hear it on her way back to her room. She stops going to the kitchen and relies on a lie about period pain and lost appetite to convince Kim to let it go. She does, without argument, and Ellie misses the security guard who would’ve cared enough to make sure she was still getting something. Kim cares as much as she is paid to. It’s a much vaster difference than Ellie had realised. 

It’s not that Tommy isn’t great, but he’s only himself. What a terrible thing to think- Ellie punishes herself by looking too often at the freshly-exposed scar on her forearm that had lived underneath her cast. It’s round and jagged, like something bit her, and the ugliest thing she’s ever seen. 

It’s true about Tommy, though. Ellie visits him and cares about him and feels half-and-half; half grateful that he lets go of all the difficult things as soon as she shuts down, never tries to properly push her to tell him what’s going on, but half angry that there’s nobody who will. Ellie wonders if anyone will press on the shell she’s got around herself and realise that it’s brittle, breakable, almost gone. She wants to be broken out of it and she wants someone to try to hug her, because she wouldn’t push the warmth away this time, she’s sure. Tommy’s great so he won’t try to hug Ellie because he thinks she doesn’t want it; it would make her feel stupid and childish to tell him otherwise. Hugging him when she got the new posters was bad enough. She doesn’t know how to let someone touch her like a normal person, and snow makes everything lonelier, and she’s cold and by herself so much of the time, and it’s only really the worst person in the world who wants to change that.

David’s presence means that Ellie aches the way limbs do after they’ve been too long in the winter, biting and sore and shaky. He would touch her, if he could. It seems a very sad realisation, for Ellie- the only person who would hold her would be taking something from her at the same time.

On the Thursday three weeks before Christmas, David makes Ellie eat dinner with her mouth shut and talks with her father about his recent lectures in a theology school outside Baltimore. She forces down three bites of beef before she gets too worried about imminent nausea to continue. Her father makes some comments about wasting food or insulting the cook and then leaves because he doesn’t care.

“Now,” David grins, “I thought we could have a talk about your news broadcast earlier this year. I thought it was very brave, Ellie.”
She looks up, startled. “Huh?”
“Excuse me,” He corrects, and won’t continue until Ellie’s repeated the two words. “Good girl.”

Three bites was too many. Ellie sips her water. “Don’t say that shit to me.”

David sighs. “Ellie… look, I get it. You’re hating this household and you’re not getting along with your dad- or his family- and I understand . I used to be just like you: I couldn’t see my place in the world, couldn’t understand my purpose.”

Ellie stills. 

“But I can see mine, and now yours is becoming clear, too. Watch.” He draws a tablet from the inner pocket of the coat draped over the back of his chair. Within a few seconds, the screen is illuminated with a frame of Ellie- Ellie, in the clothing she’d been wearing when-

“I don’t want to watch this,” She chokes.

“You should be proud of this,” David says. “You made your father proud. You made me proud, Ellie, with your brave words. It was clearly an overwhelming time, and you still managed to speak your truth. That’s bravery. That’s strength.”

He presses the triangle in the centre of the screen and Ellie watches a blotchy version of herself begin to speak.

“ I- uh, I was in that picture with my- my friend, Riley, and the caption would suggest some- that something... that something bad was occurring between us. Something sinful. The truth… the truth is that it’s an insult to both our friendship, and the strength of my own faith, to assume something of that nature. It is an insult to my friend’s life to accuse her of something like this, when she cannot defend herself. I’m- I- I’m not a-”
Ellie reaches out and turns off the tablet, vision blurred. Hearing herself say things she’s twisted and turned in her mind- things that do nothing but hurt and hate, that she’s used to justify her own fucking death- she can’t do it. Not with David smiling at her, not when she has to be alone for so much longer with nothing to do but think, think, fucking think about what you did when you said those things.

“Stop,” She begs. 

“You’re ashamed of it, but you shouldn’t be. Ellie, when you stood up for yourself, for your friend, you showed everyone that you have strength inside you. I’d assumed you were some troubled kid with an attitude problem, but when you told the world the true nature of your faith, you showed integrity. You showed maturity. Don’t you deserve a reward for that?”

Ellie thinks of foster placements who brought her to church and gave her sideways glances whenever the preacher mentioned homosexuals, and the horror stories of older kids who were beaten within an inch of their lives for ‘deviance’, and she wonders how many more of those looks and beatings and attitudes her speech has inspired. Will people look at her and think that their children are fixable, misguided, because of what she said? How many people have listened to her lie and lie and lie, and felt hated because of it? 

People are supposed to be punished- that’s what she told Frank. Ellie hasn’t been punished for what she’s done. No matter which direction she decides she’s coming from, she’s done something awful: for loads of people, telling everyone that to be gay is to be wrong should be punished with extremity. For the rest, being gay in the first place and then lying about it is even worse. Either way, Ellie understands why people want her dead. She knows why she can’t escape the hole she dug herself into when she did the interview- she needs to pay for the harm she caused. Like pinching herself when she says something terrible to Tommy, or forcing herself to endure the messy ugliness of her new scar. Ellie won’t be able to forgive herself for what she’s done until she’s paid the price. 

David is still speaking. “You and I, we’re alike. We feel empty without something to push us forwards, whether it’s anger or love or fear; we exist to do things for others, Ellie. To provide guidance. We’re leaders, and we need purpose.”

He’s holding her forearm where it rests atop the table. Ellie thinks he would hold on tighter if she tried to move away. David glances up at the doorway where Kim is waiting, and his jaw flexes.

“I’m craving some fresh air. Aren’t you?”

Ellie should pull away. She wants to, wants to tell David to fuck off and never speak to him again and spent three hours in the shower until her forearm is as red and raw as the other one. But a part of her knows Joel and Tess are in the garden, and maybe if she saw them it would all go away. The other part of her is the 'it' that she wants to be rid of.

“Fine,’ She says. This will fix it. All debts paid. You pay in fear and you go inside and you're done.

Reasonably, he won’t try anything, something tells her. There’s security everywhere. It’s probably just a walk to boost his ego while he rattles on about whatever-the-fuck. Doesn’t even come close to making up for what you did, but maybe it’ll inspire something. Bible guys are all about repenting, right?

She regrets going outside as soon as the doors close.

"You're Ellie's guard?" David grins at Kim. She doesn't smile.

"Yes."

"Would you give Ellie and I a little while? We have some catching up to do," He says.

Ellie stares at her feet. "Go, Kim," She says. 

"I'm not actually responding to orders from you, sir, so-"
David cuts Kim off smoothly. "Of course not, but it's a request. Just a short distance. I spoke to- who was it? Marlene, yes- I spoke to Marlene earlier, and she assured me I was very much authorised to ask you to step back. Is it something I should bother her with now?"
Kim is silent for a long moment. "Let me authorise," She says.

Ellie knows that if Joel were in charge of her detail, there's no way Kim would be allowed to let Ellie out of her sight. But it's not Joel, it's somebody else. Somebody new, who doesn't know David or Ellie or anything. Kim's comms crackle and she looks at Ellie for a beat.

"You have to go to bed, soon," Kim says flatly. "You have fifteen minutes, kindly stay close."

"Of course," David says. 

Ellie’s converses absorb the icy sludge and hurt her feet as David walks and talks and has his arm tight around Ellie’s shoulders. He rubs blazing stripes of wrong up and down her side, and says it’s to keep Ellie warm. She wonders what’s going to happen to her. She doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t want to be punished this way, actually, and she shouldn't have said that to Kim at all. She turns and he pulls her close. 

“Why’re you crying?” His fingers, cool and clammy and pale, slide against the skin on Ellie’s face as David pushes accidental tears into her hair. She pulls back and he leans in. “Listen: I’ll tell you something.”

She can’t speak. It’s so cold. Ellie’s so tired of being cold. She wants summer again, sweet-smelling air and swimming lessons and sun on a wooden floor.

“I’m not a peaceful man. All these things I say about courage, truth, and kindness- I admire you for those things. I’m afraid I don’t always possess them,” He admits like it’s a gift to her. His breath smells of sour red wine. “I struggle... within my own mind, with the violent parts of myself.”

He takes her hand and squeezes. Ellie’s breath won’t reach beyond her throat, won’t descend into her lungs the way she needs it to.

“But you- you give me clarity, Ellie. You may not think that you need your father, but you certainly need a father- a teacher, if nothing else. ‘I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.’"

He pauses. Tension cloys at Ellie's nostrils like heavy incense in a church.

"You see, you teach me things the same way I teach you. You’re my helper, my purpose and my challenge- and from each challenge, a lesson is born. You understand?”

Ellie stares at David and feels no warmth from his hands to hers. There’s something twisting, telling her that she can’t be here any longer, that she has to go now. With it, out of the drained weakness that has infected her, she feels a stab of sick rage.

His left hand slides up the inside of Ellie’s arm. His thumb is splayed outwards towards her chest.

“You aren’t my fucking father!” She snarls, and moves quickly, wrapping her fingers around one of David’s and snapping it sharply to the side. There’s a sickening crackle of bone breaking, and he makes a short sound of pain, releasing Ellie. She pulls back so suddenly that she falls backwards onto the half-frozen grass, gasping at the ice and the bone-deep shock of it. 

“Fuck!” David hisses.

His reaction is faster than Ellie’s, even when he’s bent over and moaning with pain. He traps her shin against the ground, pressing his weight into it until she’s sure the pattern on the bottom of his boot will be bruised into her skin. She twists on the ground and kicks at the side of his knee with her other leg until he grunts and staggers back. Ellie scrambles to her feet and sprints for the dark shapes of trees on the far side of the garden; she just needs to reach the fence, then she can call for security and tell them. Joel and Tess, waiting for her, so close by. They can’t be more than a few feet away.

The ice is slippery and unpredictable- Ellie’s barely reached the edge of the trees when she’s falling again, her head knocking sideways against a thick trunk as she goes. Her vision, already unreliable in the dark, yellows for a moment. Her palms scrape against the bark of the tree as she forces herself up again. 

“Ellie,” David shouts, barely a few metres behind her. Snow begins to fall again, thick and heavy. “Ellie, come back here. Let’s talk about this.”

“Get the fuck away from me!” She screams back, stumbling further into the dense gathering of trees. She thinks suddenly of the emergency phone, and fumbles for it, but it must’ve come out somewhere on the ground because it isn’t in any of Ellie’s pockets. She can hear David breathing, grating and uneven. Her search lasts too long, the trees aren’t clearing. Her head aches, and their trunks wave at her, and it feels like being laughed at. Where’s the fucking fence?

“El-lie,” David calls again. Ellie freezes at the sick sing-song, and wonders if she’s imagined the delight in it. “C’mon, Ellie. Come out.”

Ellie keeps moving, as silently as she can, between trees and behind bushes. Her fingers protest any movement, dry and aching with cold. The air stings her cheeks. Ellie’s only wearing a crew-neck and second-hand jeans, barely enough to go outside in this weather. She’s shaking. The snow, or her fear, or both, makes all sound seem further away. She can’t hear where David is until it’s too late. 

_________________________________________________

He comes out in front of Ellie as she circles another thick tree, taller and far broader with his thick coat. She can’t see his face, only the dark mass of him, until he’s caught her with a bruising hand on each of her biceps. 

“No- get off me!” She tries to shriek, kicking and struggling against him. David is stronger, unfairly so. He lowers Ellie to the ground so slowly that it feels like a game to him, squeezing her with one arm wrapped around her chest, pinning her arms there. She doesn’t realise what he’s doing until his other hand is at her face, and his fingers are being forced against her mouth, into her mouth, to muffle her crying and screaming. She gags, and her head slams into the ground roughly. A stone must catch it, she feels hot blood seeping into her hair within seconds.

David isn't supposed to weigh enough to pin Ellie down. She's imagined fighting him before, being able to hit back and push him away. To hurt him. But he pins Ellie down fully; she struggles and screams around his fingers and bites down until he finally lets go, and hits her in the middle of the face instead. Ellie can’t get a breath in through the pain, and David’s weight on her, and the smell of red wine and meat on his breath. He’s panting, too, reaching into the lack of space between their bodies and grabbing both Elie’s wrists at once.

They’re suddenly pinned above Ellie’s head, and she can’t move and can’t breathe anything but wine and meat and snow. She screams, and David tilts his head to the side like he’s listening to every rasping cry of it.

“Oh, Ellie,” He says, in that same sing-song lilt of a voice, “I thought you already knew. The fighting is the part I like the most.”

Ellie sobs and and spits and twists and cannot move, and she doesn’t fucking want this. She doesn’t want this, and of all the terrible things she’s wanted to do to herself or felt she deserved she cannot have done something to deserve this punishment. She cannot have deserved David’s fingers in her mouth, his breath in her nostrils, minglings with the metal of the blood streaming from her nose. 

“Don’t be afraid. There’s no fear in love,” David breathes his too-hot filth onto Ellie’s face, and there’s a stiffness between them, and she’s crying and screaming as he lifts up, just slightly, just enough to reach between them and for Ellie to feel his thumb against the skin between her hips as he rips at the button of her jeans-

Vision spotting white and yellow and red, Ellie uses the space to jerk both her knees upwards in the space between David’s legs. His grip on her wrists loosens, and she pulls her hands down, clawing immediately at his face. He loses his balance and collapses on top of her, but this time Ellie’s quick enough- her hands aren’t caught between them and without thinking, without breathing but to scream, she digs her thumbs into David’s eyes. Harder, harder, harder, until there’s a nauseating, sudden give and David’s scream almost matches the pitch of hers. He jolts on top of Ellie, and she gathers fire in each of her limbs, enough to push them over so she's on top of him, knees on each of his arms. She relents only to raise her fists above her head and to bring them down on his face again with a crunch that reverberates up her arms. She raises her arms to go again, imagining what she can break and hurt and ruin for him, his turn, not fucking Ellie anymore, just hurt for him, just him, just him-

And suddenly she’s been torn from the fractured, screaming thing that is David and Ellie’s sure that somehow it’s still him holding her, and she’s shrieking GET OFF OF ME GET OFF OF ME, PLEASE , GET OFF and doesn’t know how she’ll escape him now, and then- and then- then-

_____________________________________________

Muffled sound becomes sharper in her ears, surfacing from underwater. “-Ellie, Ellie , look at me, hey, c’mon, it’s me. It’s just me. Look.” His hands are on either side of her face, warm and firm. “Look,” He says again, with wide eyes and a voice that’s shaking. “It’s me. It’s me .”

Joel. Ellie sees him and thinks she must be hallucinating. She can’t breathe. She’s sobbing, despite it. “He-” She makes a sound, an expulsion of air and whatever she’s trying to say, and Ellie reaches for Joel. Her arms around his neck, and neither of her hands feel like hers where she holds them, but Joel feels like he always did and he’s speaking again- 

“It’s okay,” He’s saying, “It’s okay, babygirl.” It’s Joel. It’s Joel. “I’ve got you. It’s alright.” 

As soon as her grip loosens- she doesn’t know how she’s controlling it, but she does- Joel lets Ellie go, leaving one arm around her shoulders. It isn’t there to hurt her, like David’s; it’s sturdy, firm, gentle. He’s here now and that’s all Ellie’s allowed to think about or she’ll start crying again. Has she stopped crying? She’s unsure. She can’t turn around and look at what she’s done or maybe she’ll scream. David has gone very, very, quiet.

Alarmingly, wildly, she wonders if the whole thing was some sort of psychotic break she made up in her head- but no, no, her jeans are still broken and she can feel them coming down slowly and fuck, her fingers are broken.

She makes a sound unlike the others and Joel stops walking them wherever they’re going, bends down in front of Ellie and waits with his eyes on hers. 

“What’s goin’ on, El?”

It takes a series of unintelligible murmurs for Ellie’s mouth to form the word jeans, but it’s enough for Joel to look and see whatever he does. His expression changes- she can see even in the darkness. He breathes very slowly for a few moments, then looks back up at her. He’s speaking. She can’t make out the jumble of words, can’t pull the sticky letters apart into English, so all Ellie does is stand and stare at Joel until he gets the message and holds his hands out in question. She nods absently, and he loops his fingers into the belt-loops and pulls the jeans up again. Ellie wonders why he won’t button them, but she doesn’t think she’s gonna talk again for a while, so she doesn’t ask. Her throat hurts. 

Joel stands up straight and his arm goes around Ellie again. She leans against his side. They walk.

Chapter Text

Ellie does offer to sponge the blood off her skin, to be fair. It just doesn’t come out as anything close to English- that’s why she can’t be angry at Joel for going ahead with it. There’s some kind of blockage between her brain and the rest of her body and the most she can force is a jumbled sound that only worries him, which worries Ellie, and being worried isn’t something she can do without slipping into anxiety and panic and can’t-breathe-can’t-see-shakes that hurt her whole body. Her mind feels as if it’s been torn to pieces by a pack of wolves, scattered somewhere out in the garden. Ellie doesn’t want to look for it.

Time is different. She’d blinked at the butter-yellow windows of the White House and felt snow melting into her socks, winced at the flash of cameras on a cold white table, and seconds later she’s being wrapped in a thick quilt in her bedroom with no memory of how she arrived here, and then Joel’s phone screen tells her it’s been hours since dinner and she can’t fill the majority of the space. It all becomes the emptiness behind her eyes, ever-expanding without being peaceful.

Pressing too hard for details gives her a headache, and Joel seems to know when she’s doing it because he gathers her rust-coloured hands in his and tells her to breathe, Ellie, there you go. The latter part is said as if Ellie’s actually complying, which she isn’t. Not on purpose. She thinks that if she were doing things on purpose, she would want to tell Joel in actual words that she’s very-fucking-cold and very-fucking-tired and that she doesn’t mean to cry, it’s just happening. She wouldn’t bother with all the other noise.

Ellie hasn’t had such a tiny amount of air in her body since the day she found Riley. It all rushes out of her with each breath, feels gone forever, and then takes years to draw back in. If the time it took to inhale wasn’t accompanied by cracked bone and mean fingers at her hips and sounds that make Ellie nauseous, she might be able to focus, she thinks.

If she blinks a few times in a row, she can get a vague idea of what’s happening now . Joel is on one knee in front of her and he’s got a basin of water- Ellie remembers the sounds that had come out of her when he left to fill it up, and he’d had to text someone outside to do it instead because she wouldn’t let him go- and now he’s using it to clean her hands. The towel is wet and warm and Ellie’s staining it with blood that’s not even from her. She knows that, because this blood is cold and drying and her own blood is hot and gathering in the hair at the back of her head. 

“Easy, now,” He’s saying, pausing his cleaning to look at Ellie properly. She squeezes her eyes shut and open again so she won’t fade too much. “That’s it, baby. Just look at me. Keep breathin’.”

Ellie wants to look at Joel properly, to see whether the last three months have changed anything, but her eyes won’t do the on-purpose things she wants them to and instead they return to her hands, the rust, and then for a while they only seem to see the space between everything. 

Then Joel’s standing, her hands are clean except for eight red asterisks split along her knuckles, and Ellie’s grabbed the front of his shirt without thinking about how much it will sting the broken skin. 

“No- no, d-don’t, Joel, you-” The whole world seems to descend around Ellie and she’s crumbling, sinking, falling and she can’t do it alone, don’t leave again, just stay a second and I’ll be fine just wait a second-

“Hey. Hey.” Joel’s hands close around her wrists, gentle enough that Ellie’s not trapped. She blinks and blinks until she can see him. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, alright? Just gonna put the towel to the side, get a new one. You’ll see me the whole time.” He sounds so different and still only like himself. Joel’s voice has never been so quiet without being angry before.

Cool air suffocates Ellie when Joel isn’t right in front of her, and it feels like snow and rocks against her back, the smell of wine and meat, and Joel seems gone even if he said he’d still be here. She can’t see him, can’t see anything but she feels it getting closer, feels him getting closer again because she should’ve hit him one more time, one more time to make sure . She wasn’t careful enough. She wasn’t strong enough. If he didn’t get her then, he’s going to get her now. She sees him sitting up, sees the shell of his broken face she’d left, feels his eyes on her and knows he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming , he’s coming-

The space into which Ellie can pull oxygen feels shallow, like a thick block of ice is stuck way up the top of her throat. She chokes on it until warm, gentle hands cup her face and it melts some, and she can realise that there’s snot and tears all over her. She wants to tell Joel she’s sorry if any got on him. She wants to tell Joel she’s sorry for lots of things, only she can’t remember what they are. 

More time blurs. Joel’s watch is broken, but his phone tells Ellie it’s 4:28am. It’s still dark enough that she can look out her window and imagine that one of the moving shapes of nighttime is a caved-in man coming to find her, to finish it.

“I need to know what else hurts. Can you show me?” Joel asks, speaking more slowly than usual. Ellie stares until she understands, then gestures from her knuckles to her nose to her head to her shin. There are other pains, bruises she can feel on her hips from David’s hands and on her chest from the weight of him, but she doesn’t want Joel to see those yet. They’re places Ellie doesn’t want to see yet, places she wishes she could burn away from her body. She wasn't very compliant in the medical area, he tells her. He got her out as quickly as he could.

Joel has a new, warmer towel, which he drapes like a glove over his left hand and asks Ellie something again and again until he gives up trying to make her hear him. She doesn't know why she can’t. 

He wipes one side of her face in slow, steady lines, and he doesn’t touch Ellie’s nose, and she’s glad of it because it feels as if it’s been mashed backwards into her skull. Joel does the other side and says, “You’re doin’ great, kiddo,” which is one of the old things he called Ellie, but he says it like he’s said baby and babygirl and honey so it feels new anyway. She wants to lean into the nice way he says those things the same way she wants to lean into Joel’s palms on her cheeks, but she can’t move, not even inside her head.

She’s almost completely silent. It’s better than all the sounds she didn’t mean to make before, but it seems to concern Joel. He unlaces Ellie’s shoes and takes her socked feet out without bending her ankles at all, then takes the socks off too because apparently they’re stiff with ice. 

Ellie thinks they once spoke about frostbite. She can’t summon the sound to ask if she has it now, but Joel’s already put thicker socks over her hurting feet and he holds them in his hands for a second as well, like squeezing them will make them not-numb. “Feels better?” He asks. 

It doesn’t- not as far as Ellie can tell, but it’s not worse so she dips her chin in something like a nod. Her joints feel stiff as Barbie-doll plastic. “Mm.” She manages, after what is probably too long a pause. She collects her attention and tries to pin it to Joel as he begins speaking in his soft-but-not-mad voice.

“Tess is grabbin’ some comfier clothes, so she’ll help you change when you’re ready. We can have another doctor here in-” Ellie’s alarm must show on her face, because Joel cuts himself off immediately and shakes his head. “Don’t have to have anyone here yet, though. That’s okay. You’re alright, darlin’, just keep those deep breaths comin’.”

She’s not sure if words like darlin’ mean good or bad things. Ellie’s never been given those kinds of names by anyone but Tommy before, not really, and it’s different with Joel. She’s never heard the shape of them in his voice before. It fits, but not because it’s expected. It’s confusing. It hurts. 

“Tess is coming?” It must’ve been half an hour since Joel told Ellie so, but it takes time to wade through a fog- less friendly, somehow, than the one she’s been so caught in for months on end- and understand what he told her. 

“That, she is.” He nods. He doesn’t seem annoyed that Ellie’s taken so long to comprehend it; in fact, Joel seems almost relieved that she’s said anything at all, no matter how stupid. “She was workin’ an earlier shift, so she’s on her way from her apartment.”

“Okay. Tommy?”
“Just outside dealin’ with some stuff, but he’ll be around. You want to talk to him?”

Ellie shakes her head. “Just you.”

Joel breathes in and out and his thumb rubs circles into Ellie’s wrist. “Okay. I’m here.”

Another pause. Ellie goes somewhere, but she can’t remember where it was when she comes back to herself, like she’s waking up from a nightmare. She’s sweaty and cold and shaking, and knows something awful has happened, and wishes she could forget everything if it would only mean this went with it. If she opened her window, she’s sure she would hear someone calling her name in a sing-song voice, just waiting for her to be left alone again.

“Is he dead?” The words seem to surprise Joel, who’s been examining a reddish splotch along Ellie’s shin where he’s rolled her jeans up. The outline of a shoe. He looks up before he’s had a chance to wipe the anger from his face. 

“...No, not dead.” He says. Ellie watches his efforts to soften his expression- it’s a reminder that she’s forgotten to control her own face this whole time, forgotten how to in the first place. She’s sure she’s shown him things she’ll regret. “You have nothin’ to-”

“Tommy.” Ellie works to clarify what she means as he frowns: “Tommy’s outside. Dealing with stuff. Is that- is he the- ?”

Joel rolls her jeans down again while he considers this. “He is. Or was, I expect they've taken him away by now. Among other things, which we don’t need to worry ‘bout.” His phone vibrates where he’s left it on the carpet. “That’s Tess,” He reads. “Can she come in?”

Ellie thinks for what is probably more time than she needs. “‘Okay,” She decides. “Just for now.”

Tess comes in and doesn’t make much conversation. She helps Ellie into the bathroom, where Ellie gets changed- or, tries to. She needs the door ajar, first, so she can see that Joel hasn’t disappeared again, and her hands are shaking so badly that she can’t put the sweats on for a while, which gives Tess time to see the bruises on her hips and ribs anyway. 

When they take off her jeans, Tess freezes in a way that means she sees something Ellie can’t figure out. She sits on her closed toilet and blinks and blinks her into focus until Tess breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth and tucks them under one arm. She looks at Ellie grimly. 

“Time for bed, kid?”
Ellie’s exhausted as soon as she thinks of it. She slumps where she sits and Tess has to help her to her feet. They take slow steps back out to her formal bedroom, and then Tess says something to Joel and he replies, “I know. I saw.” Tess disappears, handing over the jeans as she goes. Joel puts them to the side without looking.

“You should get some sleep.” He pushes her hair back from her face, careful of certain areas which Ellie assumes are bruised or cut. “D’you think you can do that?”
It strikes Ellie again how different he’s being. She should analyse it, find a way to understand it, but she’s so tired . She lets Joel put his hand on her shoulder and lead her into her actual room, where he peels back the blankets and Ellie fits herself underneath. She’s still shaking even when she’s not cold any longer. 

“Don’t go,” She whispers to the dark shape of Joel. 

“I won’t, baby. I’ll be right here. I swear.” He says. She believes him, but she falls asleep holding the cuff of his sleeve anyway.

***

Whatever had given Ellie the ability to speak more than a word at a time has deserted her overnight. She vomits over the edge of the bed as soon as she wakes up, retching until there’s nothing left in her stomach while Joel rubs circles between her shoulder-blades the way he did when she was sick at Easter-time. It’s just as scary as it was then. It feels stupid that for a minute, she’s more afraid of throwing up than she is of the person whose blood is crusted under her fingernails.

Joel doesn’t attempt breakfast, but the sick in her hair gives him a lot of ground to stand on when it comes to taking a shower. More, when he reveals that he’s going to need to look at the cut on the back of her head and for that to happen they’ll need to get it clean. Not that Ellie’s been arguing. She does as he says and forgets most of it.

“I’ll be right outside,” He says. He puts his hands on her shoulders and then briefly on her face, angling it up so she’s looking in his direction. “I’ll be standin’ right here, and the door doesn’t have to be closed the whole way, alright? But you gotta shower, baby. Can’t feel any better with that in your hair.”

Ellie would rather shave her head than be alone in the bathroom right now, but she can’t tell Joel that. She showers for the shortest amount of time possible, eyes glued to his shadow in the doorway, and she pretends it doesn’t start to look like someone else’s silhouette, skinnier and hunched and heavy on top of her. It’s barely two minutes before she’s limping back out (her shin has started hurting more and more) with her clothes pulled clumsily back on, and she’s grateful that it’s Joel who reaches for her so she doesn’t have to risk it herself. 

“You’re okay,” He soothes. She wants to believe him more than she ever has, wishes she’d saved up trust when she had more of it so it could feel real.

It’s kind, the way he smooths his thumbs under her eyes. Ellie wishes she could understand that in her whole body, but then she’s jerking away and fuck, fuck, fuck, the skin that Joel’s thumbs had brushed feels dirtied and pulled by clammy, cold fingers, his fingers, pushing her tears into her hair. Ellie’s back hits the wall, bruises and cuts set alight once more.

She’s being pushed onto snow-and-rock ground with blood in her hair and she can’t breathe , can’t even gasp for air that isn’t contaminated by those same smells. She’s got cold fingers bruising her skin and uncut nails leaving tiny, mocking smiles all over her body where they dig in, bloody and stinging and blurred-

“C’mon, baby, breathe with me,” Joel interrupts, kneeling in front of Ellie where she’s coiled up on the floor. “You’re alright, just keep lookin’ at me, yeah? It’s all alright, everything’s fine, you’re safe here. It’s alright.”

It’s definitely not alright, but Ellie’s unsure whether Joel’s lying on purpose or just to stop her from screaming again. She feels like a raw nerve, left exposed and jolting at every touch. Each sound hurts, each point of contact is a sharp point being driven through her skin and into fat, muscle, bone, marrow.

Ellie wraps her arms around her knees and pulls herself into as small a shape as possible. Her hands won’t grip- her knuckles protest- but she digs her heels into the carpet and it feels better to be so contained. She focuses on the stretch, the itching sting of the graze on her back and the slow loosening of her shoulder muscles. She pretends there’s a shell around her, that as long as she’s curled up this way nobody can see her, not really.

Joel says her name as if he’s been trying to get Ellie’s attention for a while now. She connects her eyes to his face and pulls her knees closer when she starts to shake. It’s not a reasonable response; Joel’s got both hands out in front of him, and he’s barely close enough to touch Ellie, so she really shouldn’t be reacting at all. 

“Easy,” He says. Ellie thinks of the careful, soft way people speak to skittish dogs. “Baby, did he-” Joel stops himself, jaw flexing as he looks down and then back at her. She wants to know what he means, wants to follow the words into a whole sentence just to prove that she can. “Tess’n I saw your jeans.”

Ellie’s confusion must show on her face, because Joel turns and grabs her jeans where he’d left them folded by the four-poster bed. She sees what he’s asking her to, but doesn’t get it until her own fingers are skimming the ripped fabric, the rough edge where the zipper should be connected to the denim, but isn’t. It’s torn all the way down the edge, an open wound.

“He did this,” Joel says. It’s not a question. “What else?”
He’s so angry. Ellie feels it in rippling waves, no matter how kind his voice is, and she’s afraid that she’ll say the wrong thing. Nothing is not the truth, but she knows what Joel’s really asking and David didn’t get that far. 

“I hurt his eyes, like you told me,” She mutters, the first time she’s spoken today. “He should- he should be dead”

 Joel’s sigh carries a lot more than just itself. “That’s right. But he's gone, the police took him early this morning. He's gone, alright? You did a good thing, kiddo.”

Ellie had meant to tell him that she stopped David before it went as far as he’s thinking, but she’s distracted by ‘a good thing’. 

What she did wasn’t a good thing. She gouged his fucking eyes out, and that’s not good. It’s the kind of violence she hadn’t even thought about inflicting on herself. Hasn’t thought she deserved it until now, until she's done something only really, truly, evil people do.

Joel must see how much she disagrees with him, because he pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “David-” Ellie jerks, and he quickly rephrases, voice firm, “Look at me. Men like him don’t stop, alright? They keep goin’ until someone does what you did, and that makes it a good fuckin’ thing. You hear me? You were right to do that, Ellie.”

Ellie thinks of Joel’s daughter and wishes she was better at seeing the whole picture than she is. “Okay.” She manages. Then, with no small amount of effort, “He didn’t- he didn’t do the same thing to me. He didn’t do that.”

“You promise me?” He studies Ellie, unbearably still. “Even if you can’t talk to me about it, I can-”

“Promise.” She fills the words with as much assurance as she can. It’s too important for him to know this, somehow, for him not to doubt her. “I promise you.”

***

There are moments of clarity, but until midnight everything passes her by in streaks of colour and surges of panic. Ellie decides again and again that that’s enough, time to start acting normal again, but she doesn’t know where to begin doing so. She can’t think of what to say. She sits against the wall and Joel sits against the bed and it’s silent until the fogginess of her mind clears into something from last night, a memory of blood pooling around her thumbs or her hands pinned high above her head, and then she can’t get away from it. She saw A Clockwork Orange too young, wanting to join in on a movie night with older kids so they’d like her- the image of a man with his eyes held open to unspeakable horrors haunted Ellie’s nightmares for years until other things replaced it. She’s reminded now. Her eyes, her mind, feel forced to examine every minute of last night until she’s sure it’s really happening again, until the wall at Ellie’s back turns to snow and she can feel hot breath on her neck and face. She can’t turn away from the nightmare, can’t stand up and leave the room or turn her thoughts to something else. It’s always there. He’s always here. She has to watch and listen and feel everything until he’s done and gone, only for it to start again, somehow worse than before.

Feeling nothing, existing in empty space, should be a relief. It seems terribly unfair that Ellie can’t remember herself in those moments- she wants to enjoy the quiet, but she only realises it’s been there when it’s being interrupted by another replay of last night or Joel attempting to fix up one of her injuries. 

They’re both learning that Ellie can only handle physical contact for minutes at a time, although it feels like a betrayal that she usually can’t tell him it’s too much until she’s panicking already. Joel tells her it’s okay, but he’s wrong. 

In the afternoon, Joel puts on the heater because any trace of the cold wind outside puts Ellie on edge. He helps her change into a pair of long basketball shorts- or, she thinks he does, but doesn’t remember it happening. She’d be terrified of all this lost time if it weren’t Joel here; imagining anyone but him (and maybe Tess or Tommy) seeing her like this has Ellie’s skin feeling hot and too-tight. 

“Needed to keep an eye on that bruise,” Joel supplies, when he catches Ellie pulling at the shiny fabric of her shorts. 

“No ice?” She mumbles. Joel’s always been a stickler for that kind of thing, all business and no attention paid to Ellie’s complaints or arguments. She wishes she could find something stupid to complain about so he’d roll his eyes and stop being burdened by her inability to act normal. 

“No ice, that’s right. Didn’t take too kindly to it,” He frowns. She’s made him worried again. “It ain’t a problem, alright?”

“Mm.” Ellie responds astutely. She tries pressing into the carpet with her fingertips and gasps at the pain it causes- she’d forgotten that they’re hurt, too. Joel put bandages around her hands this morning, slow and steady like he was bracing himself for Ellie to jerk away as quickly as she had when he was patching up the back of her head. She forgot that it was Joel behind her and not someone else, hands in her hair, and she’d almost ripped some of her hair out in the process.

Ellie’s been guilty for all the moments she can remember, but now it seems stifling, closing in on her with each moment she holds Joel hostage and makes him watch her go crazy. 

 “Can’t stay here forever.”

“Why’s that?”

She looks at Joel. He’s trying to keep her talking when he already knows the answer to his own question, and she should be annoyed by it or touched by it or something -ed by it but all she feels is far away. “Hurt him. Something’s going to happen to me.”

“Nothing's going to happen to you.” Joel says firmly. “You understand me?”

Ellie mumbles something resembling the affirmative. Joel doesn’t seem convinced, and starts speaking again before Ellie can force herself to tune in. She strains until the shapes of words mean something.

“-security cameras everywhere- includin’ that area in the trees. This ain’t a situation where you did anythin’ but defend yourself, and…”

Ellie loses track of his words and tries not to remember what breaking bone sounds like when it’s your own hands crushing it. She’d hit David so hard that some of her own fingers are broken, that her arms are sore like she’s been lifting weights. She doesn’t know when she should’ve stopped for it to be called defence, but she knows that it was long before his fucking eyes were gone.

***

Ellie goes away from herself for even longer this time. Riley used to tell her how it felt to wake up after being drunk- or something else, maybe- and not being able to remember much of the night, only glimpses. The headaches and illness that accompanied waking up the next morning, the questioning embarrassment that came with wondering what you’d said, what you’d done. Ellie never told Riley if she’d said or done something hurtful the night before. She always said, you literally just fell asleep, and didn’t mention it again, no matter what she wished she could’ve asked more about. Do you always want to say that, or just when you’re not yourself, she could demand. When do you start hating me? How many minutes does it take before you realise that you want t0 hurt me? Do you come back here just to say those things? Would you come back at all if I wasn’t waiting for you?

She doesn’t think she’s said anything bad to Joel, while she wasn’t here. Her face feels swollen and raw, voice cracked like she’s been crying, limbs heavier. Ellie imagines herself like one of those old Victorian dolls with the painted-on face, stuffed with nothing and sat on windowsills or in cupboards. She imagines what it would feel like to sit still for years at a time, to watch the world with unseeing, porcelain eyes and skin layered with dust. 

He’s sitting on a desk chair near her bed when Ellie opens her eyes. “Joel.” 

“Hey. You sleep okay?”

She must’ve. Ellie wonders when the nightmares will start. “Yeah.”

“That’s good. You must’ve been out for-” Joel checks his phone- “‘Bout twelve hours.”

“Oh. Did you sleep?” It’s suddenly incredibly important that Joel’s been able to rest, and Ellie feels both selfish for having held him hostage here, and nauseated at the thought of his departure. She forces herself up on one elbow and inspects the dark circles under his eyes.

“A little. Nothin’ you need to worry about, kiddo.” Joel pulls Ellie’s t-shirt sleeve off her shoulder where it gathered as she slept. It’s different from the one she was wearing the last time she checked. Did she throw up again? 

“But-”

“Breakfast, first.” He says firmly, kindly. 

More out of guilt than anything else, Ellie sucks chocolate protein shake slowly through a straw and swallows until she’s sure she won’t throw up. Joel tells her she’s doing a real good job, kiddo, even though digesting food is something most people are able to do very early on in life and it isn’t really an achievement. 

“Had enough?” Joel asks, when she’s managed a third of the cup. Ellie nods and sinks back into her pillows. “Marlene’s askin’ to meet with you.”

Her alarm must show on her face, despite his casual tone. Joel won’t go on until she’s sipped her water.

“We don’t have to go anytime soon, alright? She’s not makin’ any decisions that we can’t override,” He says.

We? Ellie wants to ask, but only because she wants to hear him confirm that he’s really sticking around. “I don’t wanna do another speech,” She says instead. 

“‘Course you won’t,” Joel shakes his head as if it’s a given. “Nothin’s gonna happen that you don’t want. Do you trust me?”

Ellie nods. Maybe it should feel like more of a risk than it does, but it’s Joel. It’s Joel. So… whatever, she’ll figure it out when her brain doesn’t hate her.

“I… I think he’s gonna be mad. David is his friend.”

Joel turns away briefly, and Ellie can see his jaw tense. He breathes deeply. “He’s gonna feel whatever the hell he wants to, and none of it is your problem. Tess consulted his team- as of yesterday, the President and his wife are away at a conference, and excuses were made. They'll be informed when the next steps are clear.” 

Ellie thinks of what Christine said to her, and how little it meant in the end. She’d even been stupid enough to feel hopeful at the thought that the woman was doing something to help. It was only words, though. Pointless.

“Okay.” 

“...How are you feelin’ today?”

Ellie thinks, loses focus, and thinks again. 

“You could sound more worried when you ask that. It’s super relaxing.” Is what she settles on, which seems like a very Ellie-ish thing to say. Even briefly, it feels like a miracle being given access to her brain again. 

Joel, to his credit, doesn’t start praising the heavens for the return of some semblance of her personality. He rolls his eyes and pretends he isn’t pleased. “Yeah, yeah. Just answer the question, smartass.”

“My hands hurt,” She says. “Why couldn’t I feel it before?” 

“Probably shock,” Joel replies evenly, beginning to unwrap the bandages around Ellie’s left hand. “Might’ve numbed them some.” 

The rough fabric has left red patterns pressed into the not-bruised-or-bloody parts of Ellie’s skin, which itch as soon as they're uncovered. She doesn’t bother trying to scratch before Joel recovers the hand in fresh, un-sweaty bandages. None of her fingers have been so badly damaged that they’ll need to be set, he says, like it’s a relief. 

Ellie wishes she could always understand how she’s supposed to feel about things from the way Joel says them. Sometimes it seems like her brain has made some things invisible, the tone he’s using and the way his face looks. She can’t read them when it matters.

“You didn’t have to stay here this whole time,” She says, later. She’s been away from herself but it’s not as far gone as the other times. She remembers moving from her bed to the shower and how the shape of Joel’s shadow stayed the same the whole time she watched it in the doorway. She remembers going back to bed once someone had changed the sheets, and forcing down the rest of the drink. It’s blurry but it’s real, and Joel says that’s better than nothing. 

“‘Course I stayed,” He replies. He frowns like it’s weird for Ellie to say anything to the contrary. Maybe it is; it’s not as if she’s made it clear that Joel could leave. 

“You didn’t even shower.” 

He lifts an eyebrow. “I smell that bad?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Ellie says. It’s less snarky than she should be, and Joel’s expression softens. He ruffles her hair, still damp from the shower. 

“I know, kiddo. But I’m fine.”

“Sorry.”

He shakes his head firmly. “Nothin’ to apologise for, alright? You just focus on getting better.” 

“Trying,” She tells him, which is true. 

“You’re doin’ good.” Joel says, which is not. But Ellie nods, allows him to believe that just for today, she’s alright again. It’s the kind thing to do; it’s what she owes him. She’ll never stop owing people better than what she is. 

Chapter Text

The second Joel starts getting angry at Marlene, Ellie tunes out. In other words, two minutes into their meeting she enters her own world and stays there.

It’s not as if she’s missing much, anyway, because Marlene’s intent on hammering every single security code violation into their skulls and it’s going to take a while. Joel’s arguments do little to speed up the process.

“Hey.” Marlene leans forward, tapping the desk in front of Ellie. Joel makes a sound in the back of his throat that doesn’t sound intentional. “We need to talk about next steps. If you want to make this public, we will. It would have an impact, a person like Ellie? There’s already enough footage to-”

“Why the hell would she want to make it public?” Joel seethes. 

Marlene glares as if this is the millionth time he’s interrupted, which it could be. Ellie hasn’t been counting. “It’s her decision. You’re the one who made it clear that Ellie gets to choose, so-”

“‘Her decision’, meanin’ she decides when to leave her room or when to see people, not whether to broadcast that shit-”

“Ellie should be aware of the situation. The public will know by tonight that there's an open case. It isn’t the time to-” 

Their interruptions pile on top of one another like colliding currents, foamy and violent. Ellie imagines herself in the middle of the clash being somersaulted and ripped apart by waves, salt and icy water on her skin. She pictures herself trying to float the way Joel taught her so long ago and being pulled under, never allowed up for air or to see which way she’s supposed to swim, forever swept in a million directions and feeling her limbs go slowly numb as her rough outsides are sanded down into soft nothing- like seaglass, she thinks. She could float down to the sandy floor of the sea and be away from bright lights and sounds and anything alive. It’d be a nice thought if only Ellie didn’t need to endure this first.

“I don’t want to be on TV.” She says, and has to repeat it because Marlene couldn’t hear her over their arguing. Joel’s hands rest on Ellie’s shoulders with a pressure that tells her to relax, kiddo. She’s always got her muscles knitted together, he says, shoulders up at her ears and the rest of her body so tense that she’s started getting cramps while she sleeps.

“Right. Is that because you think Joel doesn’t want you to, or because you don’t want to, Ellie?” Marlene asks. She’s trying to seem understanding, which is very different from actually being understanding.

“‘Cos I don’t want to. I- do I have to go to court?”

"We're working on a 'no' basis, given how much evidence you have. Some people are transferring from your defamation case to this as soon as we can get them."

"But he's guilty. He- he tried to-" Ellie chokes on a breath, and it's as if he's on top of her again, winding her. Her ribs feels like they're breaking.

"I know what he tried to do," Marlene says firmly. "But Ellie, there are still people who will say that's not enough for more than probation. That's why," She looks at Joel, "The court of public opinion could be helpful, here. If we just-"
"Move on," Joel says dangerously. 

Marlene narrows her eyes. “...Fine. Take some time to think about it. So, next steps: we need- yes, need, Joel- a witness statement that you can write tonight. I'll work with the PR team to work on our standpoint, what we're saying and what we aren't.”

“‘Your standpoint,” Joel scoffs humorlessly. Across the desk, Marlene fixes him with a steely glare, and Ellie wonders how long it will take before the hollowness in her chest disappears. It’s like she’s having nausea for a panic attack. It’s insane, she’s insane.

“Don’t work for the first family if you’re unaware that public appearances are a priority.” Marlene is saying.

Joel makes a disapproving sound, and his thumbs rub circles into Ellie’s shoulders. It’s nice. She leans back into it, a thing she’s learned she can do since that night, and wonders if he thinks about that development as much as she does.

“Your father has been informed as of this morning. While this case is open, however," Marlene looks at Joel pointedly, “He's expressed a desire to recalibrate with a PR team where he is. He'll be back soon. For the moment, he thinks you're in medical care. Where you should be."

“I don’t want to go to hospital,” Ellie says in a small voice.

Marlene sighs, and straightens some already-straight documents on her desk. “Kid, your entire recovery plan cannot come from somebody with minimal medical training. Joel’s done what he can, but it’s protocol for you to get at least a check-up a few days after the initial trauma assessment. I promise we’ll make it comfortable for you.” Impossible. 

“When?” Joel demands flatly.

“As soon as possible.”

“Can Joel be there?” 

“Joel can wait outside the door, which is what he’s employed to do.”

“We didn’t discuss-”

Marlene raises a hand. “Joel, I’m not fighting you on this shit. Do your job and-”

“You're tellin' me to do my job?” Joel thunders, hands shifting from Ellie’s shoulders to the back of her chair the minute she tenses. The anxiety-nausea turns into actual nausea. 

“Marlene,” Ellie manages three times before the woman across the desk will look at her. “I really- I want Joel to be in the room. I- you can’t- just, you can make me do whatever other shit you want, and I’ll do it. But- but-” She can’t finish, and sinks back into the seat feeling more pathetic than anyone she’s ever known. 

Marlene’s expression shifts in and out of something so rapidly that Ellie can’t catch it. “I’m not making you do anything else, kid. This is all protocol.” She glances at Joel, then back to Ellie. “I don’t want you looking at this like a situation where you’ll be told what to do and you just have to do it. That isn’t what this is.”

“Okay,” Ellie says emptily, pressing her hands into the arms of the chair until the pain is unbearable. Marlene is silent for a very long time.

“I want what’s best for you, Ellie.” She says.

“Okay,” Ellie says again, then turns to Joel. “Can we go?”

“Hold on,” Marlene interjects, “About what we were discussing, Joel, the documents have been-”

“Later. We’re leaving,” Joel says. And they go.

***

“I’m not having nightmares.” She tells him over a floor-breakfast of seven nuggets (Tommy ate some before delivering them last night) and a green-tinted protein shake that tastes like spinach despite Joel’s insistence that the vegetable is undetectable in all but colour. “Is that bad?”

Joel finishes his own mouthful of muesli bar and considers her carefully. “Does it feel bad?”

“...No.”

“Then it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“But it isn’t normal , though,” Ellie pushes. She glances out the window at the still-falling snow and imagines herself being buried under it. A smooth white blanket to hide her until spring. “Like, I had nightmares about stuff before this. Riley.”

Another pause. Joel’s brow furrows, but not in an angry way. “There isn't anything normal in this situation, kiddo. You gotta stop expecting stuff outta yourself. Let yourself sleep through the night without feeling bad for it.”

It’s not that easy, she tells him with a raised brow. He sighs.

Ellie does feel bad for it, which is the problem (one of them). Something about sleeping the whole night without a single interruption (except a calf cramp that she’s pretty sure is worse than a heart attack) makes her feel fake, as if she’s not really been through anything. She wants proof that she’s not just being dramatic, or something, and it would be great if it could start happening while she’s unconscious so she can keep track of time while she’s awake. She doesn’t want the nightmares because she knows what they’ll carry within them, but she wants to be someone who has nightmares because that would be the normal fucking response.

Logically, Ellie understands that she’s not pretending when she throws up or has an anxiety attack, but Joel doesn’t know that. What if he starts thinking this is all just for attention? David didn’t even do anything- not the thing he could’ve done, at least- and Ellie’s pretty sure a response like this isn’t warranted by something almost happening. Does Joel think she’s doing this because she wants him to keep being this nice to her? Is she? Ellie’s certainly worried that the soft names and hugging will all go away the minute she starts seeming well enough to do things on her own. Maybe a selfish part of her wants the comfort to continue, to prolong it.

When Ellie was very small, enough that foster parents would take her in without reservations or resistance, she got sick enough to see the effect it had on people. She learned quickly that they would pay extra attention to her if she was suffering from a stomach ache or a cold, pity for her situation almost doubled, so whenever there was a genuine illness she drew it out for a week or so. They’d bring her hot chocolates or popsicles, smooth her hair back from her face, tell her that it was all going to be okay and let her hide under the covers for days on end. Ellie realised that sometimes pity was close enough to love to survive on.

That changed, obviously. She grew up enough to stop eliciting sympathy, and with her age, the likelihood of being taken in anywhere but a group home dwindled. Now, sickness meant missed meals and stolen toys, adults telling her to stop sniffling and seeking attention they were unwilling to give. Nobody checked Ellie’s temperature or cared, really, whether she had a stomach ache. Everyone was always a little ill. Pity no longer meant love, it meant that somebody had seen weakness, and weakness made you a target. Sympathy became a disguise people wore to get something- journalists, Marlene, David. 

Ellie can feel the different versions of herself tearing at one another. She understands that Joel will keep looking after her this way only so long as she’s unwell enough to warrant it, but she also knows that being unwell means surrendering control, letting everyone around her make decisions. It means being soft. Weak. Worrying Joel, too, which is selfish.

He taps her knee.

“D’you want to watch somethin’?”

Her answer comes about a billion years later. “Like what?” 

“Anything.”

“Barbie: A Mermaid Tale ?”

Joel tries and fails not to look judgemental. “Really?”

“No, just wanted to see if you actually meant ‘anything’.”

Joel nudges Ellie, pretend-grumpy. “We coulda watched it. If you wanted.”

“It’s more hurtful that you think I’d actually want to, man. I’m fifteen years old.”

“Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”

Ellie shrugs. “S’not like you were here for my birthday.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, cruel and unfair. She’s sure she isn’t angry about that- she’s not allowed to be angry about anything , actually, because even if Ellie can’t keep track of all the things she’s done wrong, she’s pretty sure they make up for whatever Joel missed. She didn’t care at the time. She doesn’t care now. It’s stupid. Mean. 

“Sorry.” She says, accidentally interrupting Joel. She hadn’t heard what he was saying, so she apologises again. He shakes his head.

“Enough.” 

Ellie thinks that’s unfair, too, no matter how kindly he says it. “Sorry,” She says again, just to be annoying and only a tiny bit because she means it. “Do you think Marlene wants me to go on TV?”

Joel pauses, breathing deeply. “I think… Marlene can only see the big picture right now. She’s not so great at thinkin’ of what you need.”

“Not what I asked.”

Another breath. He’s doing it so Ellie will copy him. “She has an idea that speakin’ out about these things is part of a movement. There are other people comin' forward about this, she thinks it’ll help more of 'em to speak up. Marlene ain’t wrong, but it also isn't the responsibility of a kid to handle all that. She wants someone on TV talkin’ about it. Doesn’t mean it has to be you.”

“Did she say all that today?”

“No.”

Ellie watches him. “You know her?”

Joel shifts his arm against hers. He waits for Ellie to nod her okay before he continues, always wary of bad reactions. She hates that he has to think about how crazy she’s going to be before he does anything. “We knew each other a while back. She was around Tommy a lot, and I guess we talked. We’re not friends.”

“No way,” Ellie deadpans. He gives her a sideways look. 

“She ain’t all bad, but we disagree ‘bout a lot of things. Same as anyone.”

“Too diplomatic, man. I wanna shit-talk.” Ellie rests her head on his shoulder and, as always, braces herself to be shrugged off. She’s still learning that the rejection won’t come. “Marlene sucks ass.”

“...She does.” 

“And she’s never got candy in her office. People with an office should always have a jar of something to give away when people leave, it’s common fucking courtesy.”

Joel looks up because he’s trying to be serious and not laugh at Ellie. “Too right, kiddo.”

***

Dr. Jerry Anderson does not have a brother named Tom, he tells Ellie. His parents weren’t very into Looney Tunes references.

“Sucks,” She informs him. As long as she’s not on that exam table, she’s okay- she didn’t throw up this morning, and only had to delay the appointment by another hour (on top of the entirety of last night) because even being on the ground floor feels like giving David a better chance at finding her. The latest updates say he's being held without bail. Ellie's brain tells her he's escaped and is waiting for her to be alone to follow through with what he started.

Joel is not very interested in their line of conversation. “Can we just get on with it?” He grunts, arms crossed. 

Ellie raises her eyebrows at him. “Don’t be a dick. He has a jar.”

It’s true; Dr Jerry has brought his own jar of gummy worms with him, despite not actually having an office other than the makeshift one they’ve set up here. Ellie’s glad she hasn’t been to this part of the house before. It’s too hospital-ish.

He’s also brought a female assistant named Mel with him. She’s got very round eyes that always seem to be worrying about something, and she makes Ellie nervous- but not so nervous that she’s going to opt out of having a woman look over her injuries rather than a man.

“You're right, we should get started. Don’t want to overstay our welcome no matter how nice it is to be here.” Dr Jerry jokes, hands up like Joel is about to lunge at him. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. For once, Ellie’s the more sane person in the room of the two of them (barely- the window is open a crack and the cold air is making her feel shaky). “Do you want to hop up yourself?”

“Am I four?” Ellie says, but her voice comes out all flat and airless like somebody’s stepped on her throat. The prospect of lying on her back with a stranger- the stranger she chose of the two, but a stranger all the same- standing over her is less than enticing. She tries to pick apart the differences between David’s voice and Dr Jerry's voice, Mel’s floral perfume and the smell of meat, the smooth plastic of the medical chair and the rough gravel. Her breath comes less evenly.

“Ellie. Ellie.” Joel is squatting in front of her. She missed the opportunity to make fun of him when his knees clicked on the way down. “I’ll be here the whole time. The whole time . You want to stop, we stop. You got that?”

“M-hm. Sorry.” Ellie mumbles.

“Now, what did I say about all that apologisin’?” He lifts an eyebrow. “C’mon.”

If Ellie’s honest, she spaces out for most of the examination. Joel all but growls at Mel when she tries to touch Ellie’s face or neck, so that’s a no-go, but the woman’s fingers aren’t too cold when they spread a prescription-grade bruise cream over Ellie’s shin and feel along her hands for any undetected fractures. 

“You have the face of an Australian ringtail possum,” Ellie says helpfully, in an attempt to distract herself from the jarring pain in her fingers and hands. 

Mel fixes her big eyes on Ellie’s. It makes her feel skittish. “How so?” 

“Eyeballs,” She manages.

The adults speak in low voices (as if Ellie can hear anything anyway), and let her sit up or lie on her side as much as possible. Mel warms up the stethoscope before putting it against Ellie’s skin- it’s still a cold shock. Even with Joel’s hands on hers, Ellie has to let herself fade away before she starts to panic. 

She comes back to herself as Dr Jerry is packing up his things.

“You okay, baby?” Joel says quietly, pulling Ellie’s hoodie back up her arms and zipping it up the front. He doesn’t do it all the way- that’s Ellie’s fault for imagining clammy hands around her neck the second her hoodie touched the skin there early this morning.

“Mm.” She responds intelligently and focuses on the baby rather than the world around them. There are fewer petnames when she’s not actively panicking, and not that Ellie wants to actively panic but it certainly is a perk that she usually forgets to appreciate. 

“Alright. Let’s head upstairs.”

Ellie forces herself to meet his eyes. “‘Kay.” Joel helps her down, untucks her hair from the neck of the hoodie, and wraps an arm around Ellie’s shoulders the way he did when he first found her out there. It’s the only part of that night which Ellie’s okay with reliving.

“You don’t want a gummy worm?” Dr Jerry is holding the jar out. “They’re my daughter’s favourites.” 

“She can have my share.” She says. 

“That’s very kind of you, Ellie, but don’t you want to-”

“She said no.” Joel responds without a hint of politeness. His hand is on Ellie’s back the whole way up the stairs, and she wonders how many rooms he’s going to have to get them out of before she can do it herself.

She climbs into bed and feels the familiar ache of melancholy set itself into her bones, her hands, the backs of her eyes. She’s being unreasonable. She’s being insane. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” She says, sobs, to Joel, who has completely given up telling her off for apologising. He doesn’t know what’s made her so unhappy in the distance between her bedroom and the makeshift medical room any more than Ellie does.

“It’s all alright, baby. It’s alright. It’s okay.” He whispers, a comfort to match each of her apologies. It must go on for hours. Ellie cries silently or loudly and neither one feels better, neither one can put even the tiniest dent in all the Bad inside her. She’s supposed to be getting better. Going a day without a panic attack is meant to mean that every day will be without one, now. She’s not meant to be so weak.

Slowly, taunting her, the horror film of that night outside begins replaying. This time, Ellie doesn’t endure it silently- Joel already knows what’s happening, tries to stop it and she knows she’s hurting him when she won’t calm down like he wants her to, but it’s all too much. Ellie watches and watches and feels and remembers, and her hands shake even when they’re held tight by Joel, and she falls asleep totally convinced that she can smell sour red wine.

It’s not a long sleep; she wakes up sweating and terrified and, briefly sure that the person holding her shoulders is about to rip open her jeans and then, and then, and then, then he’ll-

“It’s just me, Ellie- Ellie, baby, look at me. It’s me. It’s me.” Joel says. It’s another few moments before she can connect his voice to the person letting her go, but he doesn’t hit her back or hurt her to make Ellie stop, just waits and tells her that it’s him, it’s him, it’s him. 

The relief that she’s started having nightmares is dulled into nothing by the realisation that Ellie can feel this terrible without remembering why, and Joel seems to have seen a whole lot more than he’s willing to let on. Ellie knows she was screaming from the scratchiness in her throat- he insists she was just a ‘little upset’. There seems to be even more tension wired into his posture, his expression. Ellie thinks she’ll die of guilt when the lights turn on and he’s got red scratches down his forearms; the pain in her own hands and fingers had been the only evidence that she’d hurt him until now, and she’d been comforted by the thought that she’d done more damage to herself than to Joel.

Briefly, Ellie’s pulled back a month and feels certain that everyone would be better off if she just died. She knows the thought is wrong, and she can’t justify it as concisely as she has before, but it gnaws at her while Joel carefully cuts her nails. It’s not the first time, she knows. She hopes it’ll be the last. She’ll die if she keeps hurting him.

“Stop lookin’ like you’re in trouble, baby.” He tells her quietly, finishing her right hand and putting it back on the ice-packs he’s pulled out of nowhere. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“S’not like you’re cutting them because I’m getting a manicure,” Ellie replies as steadily as she can. He gives her a Look, which she answers with a pointed glance at the red lines down his arms. 

Joel sighs. “I’ve had worse than a couple of scratches. I’ll survive.”

She should bounce back with a retort, something to prove that she’s still herself so the line between his eyebrows will smooth a bit. But of course, nothing comes, so Ellie sits in silence until he’s done and starts checking that her fingers haven’t been pushed out of the plastic splints they’re meant to heal within.

“Not ‘cos I think you’re mad,” She says, back in bed with the blankets up to her chin, “But I’m really fucking sorry.”

“For the scratching? Baby, you can’t-”

“Not just for the scratching. I…” Ellie gets choked up and has to stare at the wall for a minute before she can continue. “I don’t wanna be like this. I didn’t want you to come back and for me to be… stuck like this. I was meant to be better. I was fucking trying.”

It’s true. She’d been so close. So fucking close to being able to annoy people the way she used to, to being overtalkative and full of an energy she hadn’t touched in months. Ellie was supposed to be ready for Joel to come back and see that she was actually worth some of the fuss, and now she’s worse than before. If she’d died back then, and he’d been freed, would he be happier right now than he is? Sure, he’d be upset, but wouldn’t it be better for him to let her go rather than staying in her room for days on end while she panics and vomits and cries?

“Ellie, look at me.” She does, fighting the urge to shrink back at the seriousness of his gaze. “You’re not meant to be anythin’ but what you are. I’m proud’a you for tryin’, I am, but you didn’t need to- to convince me, or Tommy, or Tess that you’re worth bein’ here for. It hasn’t even been a week, babygirl- let alone what happened before that. You’re allowed to be however you need to be.”

“What if this is it, though? I’m not a fucking person, Joel, and- like- I don’t feel like I’m even alive.” Ellie turns her face towards the pillow, trying to resist letting it crumple the way it wants to. Joel’s hand comes to rest around the side of her head. 

“This isn’t it.”

“But what if-”

“It isn’t. You are alive, and you’ll be on your way back soon enough. Just gotta let yourself survive this, first- if I could tell you that you’ll get through this shit without feelin’ it, I would, but you can’t. Just need to let time keep doin’ its thing, yeah?”

“I don’t want to wait, Joel,” Ellie says, sounding like a child. “I’m not even- not even fixed from Riley, and a whole lot of other things that I’ve done and-”  

“Baby, you haven’t ‘done’ anythin’.” Joel frowns deeply. “Riley wasn’t your fault- none’o this was your fault.”

“Riley was my fault!” Ellie tears herself away, sitting up straight too quickly. Her ribs ache. “I didn’t- didn’t call the fucking cops, I didn’t stop her from getting addicted to that shit in the first place! I- I had chances, I could’ve told one of the foster parents or a social worker or anyone, but I was too fucking selfish and stupid to get that that’s what I should’ve done. I killed her, Joel. It’s like, if you’re watching a dog, or something, drown in a river and you don’t do shit to help them, their death is on your hands. That’s how it is with Riley, it’s- it’s- it’s like that with everything . 

‘I fucked it with you and Tess and Tommy, I made Marlene send you away because I fucked up with the speech and the pictures and the pills and even- even before that, when I was a dick for no reason and I smoked weed sometimes and then-” Ellie gulps down air and swipes under her nose angrily- “I took the pills and I wanted to die. Like, whatever the reason was, or something, I tried to fucking kill myself and I did that to you. To all of you. I’m selfish and I’m terrible and I can’t- can’t keep thinking about it because there are too many things I’ve done for me to even start thinking about what other people have done! What he did- or-or tried to do, didn’t even do it the whole way and I’m still-” 

She covers her face with both hands and makes ugly sounds, doesn’t resist when the bed dips under Joel’s weight and her side meets his chest. He’s saying things quietly and Ellie hears none of it- she feels as if she’s admitted to a crime and the only reasonable thing to do is hate her. Any response outside of that is insane and implausible, a dream she’ll wake up from. 

It’s as if the whole cold, salty, cruel ocean has made its way into Ellie instead of just tossing her around. She can’t breathe. She stings, hurts, burns, aches, shivers in and out of this room, her mind, the cement parking lot, and feels the waves of shame or guilt or grief inside her crest higher and higher.

***

“What she needs, Tess, is some goddamn time,” Joel is arguing from just outside Ellie’s room. He thinks she’s asleep- when his phone rang, Ellie kept her eyes closed so she’d be able to eavesdrop the way she is now. 

It’s been several days. Ellie’s afraid to ask how many, largely because she thinks it’ll worry Joel that she doesn’t know and also because she’s nervous that the number will provide far too much space for her memory to fill. Joel’s had to leave to change and shower twice, now, which seems to prove more than two days - even though each trip has only lasted an hour, he acts as if he’s stabbing Ellie in the back each time she goes. It’s likely he’d do it as infrequently as possible. Gross. 

Tess was here while Joel was gone, and seems to be of the opinion that Ellie needs to leave her room at some point in the next six months. She’s not a dick about it, but Joel got pissed when Ellie mentioned the suggestion and that means they’ve been fighting about it. They both know Tess is right, but she also knows that Joel isn’t going to ask her to leave before she wants to, and that comfort is a little too easy to accept.

“-Not going to force a kid to-” Joel is cut off by the tinny sound of Tess’ voice on his phone; he crosses the hallway to Ellie’s door and then back to the other side. Ellie can see his shadow moving in the cracked doorway. “You think I don’t know that? But you’ve seen the threat level right now. You know that-”

Know what? What fucking threat level, if he’s in jail?  This would be so much easier if Tess was here as well. Maybe Ellie should start complaining about the way Joel smells again, on the chance they’ll have this fight within hearing range. 

“...Yeah.” Joel sighs heavily. “That’s somethin’ we’ll deal with when Marlene and Maria get it done. ‘Til then, I figure we take it a day at a time.”

There’s a long pause. As she often does, Ellie uses it to think about what a fucking burden she must be and then only a little bit about whether Joel will let her have another can of orange soda before dinner.

She’s so lost in the array of unsolvable problems her brain provides (and also potential soda), that she doesn’t realise Joel’s ended the call and is opening the door. They stare at each other for a very awkward moment.

“What’re you doin’?” He asks in the way adults do when they already know the answer and don’t think it's good. 

“Sleepwalking.” Ellie offers. 

“Try again.”

“Mark Zuckerberg put a chip in my brain and forced me to-”

“Ellie.”

She looks down sheepishly, scuffing her toes into the carpet. “...Fine. Just wanted to know what you guys were saying about me. Figured it’s my business, since it’s about me and all.”

Joel sighs. “You figured wrong. It was a private conversation, kiddo.” He jerks his head towards Ellie’s room, and follows her inside, closing the door quietly behind him. “But seein’ as you heard, we should talk about it.”

In Ellie’s opinion, they’ve been doing entirely too much ‘talking about it’ since she said that shit about Riley and fucking everything up. Joel’s had about four separate conversations wherein he essentially tries to absolve Ellie of all wrongdoing- probably more, if she counts the times she’s been zoned out- and it’s all very nice of him but there are only so many meaningful conversations a girl can have. 

(Not that she’s going to stop him; she can see that Joel’s only talking this much because he wants to fill some of the silence she’s created, and it’s a nice thing to do. She just can’t let any of it sink in.)

“I’m kinda tired.”

“You can go back to bed.”

Ellie frowns. If she’s back in bed she’ll start Thinking, Feeling, and Remembering, none of which are exactly her favourite hobbies at the moment. “It’s cool. If Tess wants me to get the fuck out of my room before I turn into one of those feral kids from Wikipedia- it’s fair. And I’m gonna. I’m fine. I feel better.”

Joel is no longer interested in pretending he believes Ellie when she says these things. He hasn’t exactly reverted to his former self, whatever that even was, but Ellie’s relieved that the Big Talks they have aren’t totally surrounded by more of the same mushy shit she’d been starting to find a bit unnerving. He’s familiar, this way, even if he still insists on being far gentler than she deserves. He’s still Joel.

“You’re not about to turn into a feral kid.”

“Ideally.”

“You won’t. And I’m all for gettin’ out, but not pushing yourself too hard. We have time.”

“You’re not really getting any younger, dude. This Christmas could be your last.” 

He gives her a look that says he doesn’t find her very funny. “I mean it. Don’t do anythin’ for other people’s sakes. You focus on yourself.”

Unfortunately for Joel, Ellie plans to do exactly the opposite of focusing on herself. She’s pretty sure he’s sprouted about a million more grey hairs because of all the shit she’s done this year, and being holed up with someone whose mental wellbeing is equivalent to that of the Joker can’t be inspiring much improvement on that front. Joel says he’s fine where he is, and he doesn’t want to leave Ellie on her own (which is very very much too nice and she doesn’t want to think about it), but she also thinks he might start having muscle spasms from all the tension he’s carrying around in her stuffy room. If he won’t leave without her, she’ll have to get her shit together.

It’s not all selfless. Ellie doesn’t want to be a hermit forever, and she figures it’s better if she gets over it now so that she doesn’t spend the entirety of her sixteenth and seventeenth years being a total freak. She’d very much like to breathe fresh air again without feeling her throat close around it.

Tommy shows up on Wednesday morning while Joel is getting their lunch- under the pretence of playing Fishdom on his phone, Ellie finds out that she’s locked herself away for a total of eight days. She’d been right that finding out how much time had passed would fuck with her; she hardly remembers enough to fill two entire days, let alone more than a week.

“How’s your affair with my lawyer going?” She interrogates, to distract herself. 

“Just fine,” Tommy says. “And since the defamation case ended, you’ll be glad to know we have plenty of time to spend without any gremlins interruptin’ us.”

“Ew.” 

The way he said it, Ellie is definitely supposed to know that the case is done already. She wonders which blank period of the past week she can slot it into and begins to sweat at the number of possibilities- it’s a good thing Joel comes back when she does, and Tommy is ordered to take off his damn shoes in the same voice Joel uses to tell her to stop imitating Jar-Jar Binks. 

“Think by now he woulda noticed I’m a grown-ass man,” The younger Miller grumbles. Ellie takes the opportunity to point out the mixture of snow and mud he’s tracked onto the carpet, which makes him doubly annoyed. Joel ruffles her hair fondly.

He’s back on his healthy food mission, which means an array of vegetables and some lightly cheese-covered pasta for lunch instead of the tater tots Ellie requested. She’s still deciding whether to be relieved that he thinks she’s okay enough to be slightly more dick-ish to, or irritated that he is no longer giving her junk food for most meals- the former feeling wins out, as the pasta itself isn’t so terrible and Joel looks particularly hopeful at her efforts to force down an entire half half.

She knows she’s hardly talkative; it’s mostly Tommy filling the silence, and there are short gaps she’s sure he leaves on purpose just in case she’s got a comment to make. Swamped in the feeling that she’s letting both of them down, the opportunity to show how much she’s actually improved seems most pertinent.

“I wanna go outside.” 

The two brothers exchange a very obvious look before Joel replies gently, “Ellie, we talked about this. You don’t have to-”

“Except I do. A bit.” She gives him a tight shrug, feeling anything but relaxed. She’s sort of hoping one of them will tell her there’s been a nuclear war, meaning that actually none of them can go outside, and it has nothing to do with Ellie’s mind at all. 

Joel looks slightly pissed, but softens the minute he sees Ellie shuffle backwards. “Ba- Ellie,” He corrects immediately at the mortified look she gives him, “Tess agrees that you should take it at your own pace.”

“Cool. This is my pace.” Ellie glances between them, and Tommy looks away from Joel to offer her a somewhat distracted smile.

“If she’s feelin’ ready, shouldn’t Ellie- ?” He starts, but falls silent at the glare Joel sends his way.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Joel says firmly. Ellie huffs.

“I don’t want to keep discussing things! I said I was fine, I’m fine. I’m better.”

There’s a long pause. Joel’s jaw tightens and loosens about a hundred times while Ellie presses her sore fingers into her knee so her mind won’t drift. Tommy sees and frowns. He doesn’t comment, much to Ellie’s relief; that would definitely be a red flag for Joel.

“I don’t have to leave the property. I just have to go outside.” 

“You couldn’t anyway, hon, it’s-”

Joel silences Tommy again, more angrily. “Tom.”

“What, you haven’t…?”

“No, I haven’t.” They stare at each other, Joel glowering and Tommy frowning, until Ellie interrupts. 

“Haven’t what?”

Joel doesn’t answer the question- doesn’t even pretend to hear it. “It’s cold out. Don’t want you gettin’ sick.”

“Haven’t what? And I’ll wear a sweater.”

“Wouldn’t want you hurtin’ your hands, either, not when-”

“My hands? On a walk? Is this the circus?” Ellie gives him what she hopes is an appropriately judgemental look. “Tell me what you were talking about. I don’t wanna not know things just ‘cos I’m… like this. Please.” 

She tries to maintain as unflinching an expression as possible until Joel swears under his breath, visibly stiffening. Still, his voice is gentle when he says, “There’ve been some issues the past few days. You remember the threat made against you last month?”

“Yeah, everybody shat themselves for no reason,” Ellie says. Honestly, she feels about as indifferent as she sounds; Ellie can’t make it real in her mind. Joel shoots her a disapproving frown. “What about it?”

“There’ve been a couple more,” Tommy supplies, filling his brother’s tense silence. “Your brother-“ She gives him a look- “The president’s son, sorry, has been sayin’ some shit on the news that plenty of people don’t like, which hasn’t helped. The whole family ain’t exactly America’s sweethearts right now.”

Were they ever? Ellie thinks maybe there are dots she’s supposed to be connecting, but she can’t think very clearly at all.

“Your bein’ here in DC is more of a risk than I’d- than we’d - like,” Joel explains. “It’s not safe for you to be outside the property.”

“So I’ll be inside the property, then. Done-zo.” 

“...Right.” He says, exchanging a look with his brother. “But that ain’t a viable solution if we also want you feelin' better. Actually, Marlene and I have been talking about a more long-term relocation.”

Ellie blinks. “What do you mean?” She finds the part of her that’s become soft and hopeful and weak and squashes it with all her might. Relocation means not here, not in this room, not near these people. There's always a fucking catch. “Like- like, not in DC?"

"Nah, kid. Not in DC." Tommy smiles, albeit hesitantly. "'Bout four hours away, actually."

Ellie does not end up making it outside this afternoon.

Chapter Text

It takes a long time to get it into Ellie’s head, but by the time they’re done she’s teetering dangerously close to both a panic attack and literally shitting herself - similar feelings, but not actually the same. 

Joel explained that basically, her life is in danger most acutely when she’s in DC and they have reason to believe that it’s a shitty place for her to be mentally, too. (She’s unsure what gave them that impression.) Regardless, Marlene has agreed that the best place for Ellie to be is somewhere safe, isolated and free from the constant surveillance and media attention that both her own and her family’s public reputations bring- not only did her PR stunt earlier in the year earn her about a million haters from both ends of the political spectrum, but she’s told that her half-brother and father are saying some Totally Batshit Stuff that is earning the entire family a security upgrade to match the death threats and public vitriol. Plus, she permanently maimed a very well-known pastor who the world now knows is pleading guilty to 'assault with intent to commit a sexual offence'. She doesn't want to think about that part more than is strictly necessary.

There are a few possibilities. Boarding school (“Fuck that”, Ellie and the Millers agree), matching each of her father’s movements so the security coverage can be more concentrated (“Double-fuck that.”), or finding a safe location for Ellie to spend at least the next six months. The third option makes Tommy look so pleased that it freaks Ellie out and he has to leave the room, and she’s briefly lost in thought about completely different things until Joel reminds her of their conversation. Ellie’s yet to discover a topic so riveting that it will surpass the memory of gravel against her back. 

Joel explains the rest once she’s calmed down and can think again. The house in Virginia is still unoccupied, he says. There’s room on the property for a rotating security fixture and a live-in team of permanent guards. There’s a bedroom that Ellie can put her posters in and a lake she can swim in when it’s warm again. She doesn’t have to stay here. This doesn’t have to be her whole life.

Ellie sits against the bathroom door by herself and breathes. 

The house in Virginia feels so close to paradise that she’s almost convinced herself it wasn’t real. There were bad moments there, but it was so far from everything Ellie knows and everything she is that she can think of it as perfect. It should be framed on a wall next to Riley sitting beside her in their tree, Riley stringing beads onto Ellie’s shoes, Riley, Riley, Riley-

Ellie presses the soles of her feet downwards and feels the cool bathroom tile through the thin fabric of her socks. This position isn’t new. She’d sat like this while Riley imitated the stupid kids they didn’t like, stomach aching from laughter and nostalgia for a childhood she knew was fading away too quickly. She’d sat like this when Riley smoked her first cigarette out the window and said thank god it’s just you here when it made her cough, things that meant too much and not enough. She’d sat like this against a bathroom door while Riley threw up into the toilet, shaking with a hangover they both knew was from more than just drinking. Ellie had watched Riley move in jerks, like a poor animation, and she'd stayed like this instead of helping.

Ellie’s alone but she’s also surrounded by a thousand iterations of herself sitting the same way. If she closes her eyes, she’s back in the bathroom of each house-not-home she was moved to, waiting for Riley to knock on the door in the pattern they’d learnt so nobody else could get in. They’d had their own map of places they’d be safe from bigger kids or foster parents or chores- bathrooms, public libraries, laundromats, the park. Ellie had shown Riley where to find the parking lot she would die in when they slept there for a night once, both barely teenagers and determined to run away from the whole fucked-up system. She didn’t think Riley had remembered where it was. She didn’t realise that she might ever use it the way she did.

Ellie thinks maybe one of the reasons she wanted to die was because death felt like the final spot on their secret map. There, they could both have some quiet and Ellie wouldn’t have to sit against a door to keep the world out. It would have been so nice to be close to Riley again, even if it meant leaving everything behind, and even if Ellie doesn’t think she’s going to try to do what she did again there’s a part of her that wishes she’d succeeded. It’s selfish and it’s very small, but it hurts enough to notice.

And now they want her to leave everything behind, so she’s not even allowed to be close to the pieces and places of Riley that she has left. If Ellie leaves DC she can’t visit the park. She can’t climb their tree or sit on Riley’s bench or catch glimpses of their childhood on sidewalks through a car window. It’s childish and it’s a lie, but she doesn’t want to lose the chance to turn a corner someday and see Riley waiting for her the way Ellie’s been waiting for Riley. She’s had a long time to imagine impossible, perfect worlds in all the time she’s spent alone in the real one, and she doesn’t want to leave it behind. She wants to keep hoping, as if a door against her back is enough to erase over a year of her life. She wants to keep hiding a little longer, pretending someone is going to come and knock on the door in a pattern only Ellie and Riley know. She wants to be younger and so much older.

***

“Ellie.” Joel knocks gently on the door. It’s the last time he says her name before he sits, giving up. Ellie hears the soft whoosh of his back against the wood as he slides down, and they way he exhales when he’s on the floor, and it’s nice to know that he’s not tense enough to stay standing. His voice comes through all muffled. “Can you let me know you’re alright?”

She taps the flat of her palm against the wood and he sighs again, less worried this time.  

“Thanks, kiddo.”

There’s a pause and Ellie tries not to let her grief swallow her so completely that she can’t hear Joel if he tells her he’s going to come visit plenty.

"Do I really have to go to Virginia?"

He shifts and stills again. “If it ain’t what you want, baby, we’ll talk about other options. We’ll figure it out.”

“Really?” She manages. That feels like an unfair name to call somebody you're not going to see again for a long time.

“Yeah,” He’s quick to respond, probably just relieved that she isn’t mid panic-attack or something. “Yeah, El, that’s fine. We just want you safe.”

“Oh.”

“You want to stay in there a little longer?”
“Mhm.”

He’s moving again, getting comfortable. Ellie’s eyes sting. “Kiddo, I- I know we didn’t leave Virginia on the best terms, but I hope it ain’t a place you wouldn’t feel safe ‘cos of that. I- We thought you seemed happy there, s’why we suggested it to Marlene.”

Tears fall hot down Ellie’s cheeks. Her skin is raw now, she cries so often. A year ago Ellie would’ve hated someone as weak as this, would've knownt hat crying doesn’t get you anywhere good. Crying gets adults ready to give you something to goddamn cry about. It's a weakness.

“How-” Ellie swipes at her nose and whispers to make her voice less shaky. “How long before I could see all of you again?”

Wrong thing to say. Joel doesn’t hear her, which he’s sorry for but she isn’t.

“How long would I be there for?” She asks, stronger this time.

“Depends. Marlene and I are ironing out some details, but it’d really be about how you were doin’. It could be a couple years, could be more. We’d figure it out.”

“And… and I don’t have to go?”

Joel pauses. “Not if you really don’t want to. We’ll just work out another plan. Somewhere else.”

Ellie presses her hands against her mouth and closes her eyes. 

If she’d never known Joel or Riley or Tess or Tommy she would want to leave DC and never come back. If it didn’t mean ending up alone, Ellie thinks this might be the best chance she’s ever been given to survive the rest of her life. 

Joel tries for an hour to get her to open the door before she actually does, but she’s not in trouble for taking so long. She sits in bed and he tells her again that they’re going to work out something that ‘suits’ her, but nothing has ever really suited Ellie and maybe nothing ever will and maybe she’s going to be by herself somewhere for a long, long time and maybe she wasn’t meant to survive long enough for any of this and maybe the pills should’ve fucking worked. 

“I’m not freaking out,” She says to Joel, who is watching her like he's considering calling the bomb squad. 

“Alright. Mighty quiet, though.”

Ellie can’t think of how to answer that for a minute, which sort of proves his point. She takes a deep breath. “I’m thinking.”

“About moving away?”

Ellie nods, because there’s no point in lying. I’ll miss everyone too much, she wants to say. I don’t want to stay but I don’t know how I can leave and feel okay at all. I don’t know how to say goodbye to people again. 

"I need to ask somethin', El-"

"I just don't really know what this-" She speaks at the same time as he does, but Joel holds out a hand for Ellie to continue. "I don't know what this is meant to feel like. Was it hard to leave Texas?” 

Joel looks surprised and then defensive and then about six other things that Ellie can’t read before they’re gone. He settles on something kind, at least.

“Yeah, a little.” He looks down, considering it. “First time I went was to be with Tommy, so I guess I had somethin’ waiting for me that made it easier. It’s better when you’re with family.”

That’s potentially one of the least helpful things he’s told Ellie in the past few days, given the fact that she will have exactly nobody even vaguely familiar with her. She hasn’t stayed in contact with the people she met last time she was in Virginia at all.

“Was it harder after-” Ellie swallows his daughter’s name a minute too late; Joel understands what she means. “Sorry,” She says. He shakes his head but looks pained.

“It felt like it was going to be harder, knowin’ she wasn’t waitin’ there for me. But in the end it was alright.” He’s tense. Ellie’s made him tense.

“And you got to come back again,” She says feebly. 

“I did,” Joel nods, “Just like you can come back here, if that’s what you decide when you’re older. We just figured maybe you’d want to leave, kiddo. This ain’t a happy place to grow up. You need somethin’ better.”

“Are there actual options, apart from Virginia?”

Joel’s brows knit together in confusion. “Is there somethin’ wrong with that place that I don’t know about?”

Ellie thinks, It’s only going to hurt to be there alone after I had it with everyone. 

“Humidity. Fucks with my hair.” It’s the kind of joke that would usually make him more relieved than anything, a reminder of Ellie when she didn’t seem so apart from herself. Joel only goes on looking worried.

“There’d be other safehouses we could find. Would take a while to clear another area, but if it’s what would work best for you, we could-”

“I don’t want it to be a big deal,” Ellie interrupts. 

Joel’s answer is not satisfying; “It is a big deal, kiddo. We’re talkin’ about where you’re living for the next while, that’s serious.”

He’s become annoyingly good at spotting when she’s doing the pressing-her-fingers-until-they-hurt thing, and catches Ellie’s hands before it can even start to numb the conversation properly. She swallows. There’s an embarrassment that is always summoned by the concerned frown Joel wears, like he’s caught her doing something shameful. Maybe he has. 

“It's a big deal, but it isn’t meant to make you stressed like this.” He says firmly, eyes on Ellie’s. “And I want you to feel like you can decide, here. If the house in Virginia doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. For whatever reason. You tell me and I’ll talk to Marlene.”

“I don’t wanna go somewhere too far away, either.” Ellie says urgently, realising a beat too late that he wasn’t releasing her hands to leave right this second, only because he doesn’t want her to feel nervous about being trapped. She’d spent four hours curled up in a corner a few days ago because her sheets were tucked too tightly around her body; Joel’s become very aware of giving Ellie space. It’s kind and terrible because if she’s moving away for fucking years, she doesn’t want him to remember her as some skittish, traumatised child. 

“That’s alright too.” Joel is saying. It’s taken her too long to respond. “...Kid, if there’s something bothering you about this whole thing, you can tell me. You should tell me.”

She can’t meet his eyes. “Everything’s fine.”

He taps her chin gently, giving her a look like bullshit when she finally drags her gaze upwards. “What’s goin’ on with you, huh?”

His voice is so gentle that Ellie thinks she might hit something. She shrugs and focuses on a spot just next to his face. “I’m tired.”

He sighs, and she knows it’s because he doesn’t believe her but he isn’t going to push it. “...That’s fine, then. You want to watch a movie?”

Ellie thinks for a few seconds too long about how nice that would be, then shakes her head because it’ll also hurt too much to know it’s one of the last times. “I’m all good. I gotta shower.”

He pushes her hair out of her face and presses his hand warmly to the side of Ellie’s head. She leans into it because she knows he can and she knows he's careful not to press skin against her face in case she has a reaction. Not that she really does, with him- Joel’s hands are always warm and nothing like the cold clamminess of David or sometimes, her own fingers. She thinks she’ll miss the feeling of being comforted by hands; other people only ever touch Ellie to hurt her or to move her to a more convenient spot out of the way. 

Joel comes and checks on her when he thinks she’s sleeping. After the third time, Ellie gives up playing along and rolls over to face him. He’s changed clothes. She thinks maybe he’s started sleeping on the bed in the main room, and that’s probably not allowed but he’s not on the clock right now, either. It feels better that he’s close by. And he’s spent enough time snoring on her fucking desk chair; a kid-of-the-president-grade bed is absolutely deserved. 

“Howdy,” She whispers. 

“Howdy,” He replies, equally quiet. He opens the sliding door a bit more and steps through, arms crossed. “Why’re you awake, kiddo?”

“Why’re you ?” Ellie shuffles up and squints at him. “Watching me sleep is weird.”

“Good thing you weren’t sleepin’,” Joel says (annoying). “You need anything?”
Ellie shakes her head, then says, “No,” When she realises he might not be able to see.

“Ellie,” He says, in his We’re About to Talk voice. Fuck. “Baby, you’ve clearly got somethin’ on your mind. You’re-”

“I’m just-”

“Hold on.” She sees him hold out a hand to stop her in the faint silhouette the open door gives him. “Just- let me say this, alright?”

“...Okay.” 

He takes a long breath, then sits on the edge of Ellie’s bed like he has a hundred times before, facing away from her. It’s a smaller mercy that he, like Ellie, doesn’t always want to make eye contact when they’re saying Serious Shit.

“You’re keeping somethin’ to yourself since we talked about moving, and we both know it ain’t good. I know the kind of thoughts that brain o’yours comes up with, kid- especially when you don’t talk it out. Doesn’t have to be to me- I can call Frank, or Tommy, or Tess. Anybody. But you don’t handle this shit by yourself anymore. I want you to know that-”

“Because you’re scared I’m gonna hurt myself?” Ellie can’t stop the note of frustration in her voice, however irrational it is. If Joel really thinks she’s that fucking crazy, still, no wonder he wants her gone. Or- further away, at least. 

“You’re tellin’ me I shouldn’t be?” 

Ellie scowls. “Yes. I’m not gonna do anything stupid, man, I just have stuff on my mind. Nothing to stress about.”

“I don’t buy that,” Joel says a little sharply, which stings. He sees Ellie’s reaction and sighs heavily, shaking his head again. “I’m just… worried about you, darlin’.” 

That’s a name she hasn’t heard in a while. She’s still getting used to ‘baby’ (as if she ever will), along with the entire idea that anyone could know her and think she’s the type to suit nice names like those. Especially Joel, who’s seen so much of who she is.

“I’m not trying to worry you,” She says, softened against her will. “Feels like it’s kinda normal for me to have thoughts about moving to a whole new place, anyway.”

“It is,” Joel allows, “But not the kinds of thoughts that make you hurt yourself- your hands, first off. And your shower was too damn hot, Ellie, your skin was burnin’ red afterwards. You know those things ain’t better than talking about it. You’re smarter than that.”

Ellie blinks quickly. He’s saying too much of what she’d assumed was unspoken, and she feels forced open when all she wants to do is ignore the weights behind her eyes.

“You’re mad?” She asks, pathetic. She should be doing more to close herself off again.  She should be preserving whatever dignity she has left- she could, right now, which is a luxury she hasn’t had much in the past days of panic attacks and crying. Why can’t Ellie do what she’s always done? Why can’t she remove herself from it, say something awful enough that he’ll stop? She’s never had an issue fucking up if it means she doesn’t have to talk about things before. 

“No, baby. Not mad.” Joel says, which makes it a lot worse. 

“I didn’t- I don’t do those things because I want to die, or something. It’s not like a ‘self-harm’ psycho thing, I swear,” Ellie insists.

He doesn’t quite respond to that, which is probably because he disagrees. “Look, you need to talk to someone,” He says instead, “If it ain’t me- which is fine - tell me who to call, kiddo. But this ends tonight.”

“It’s like, two in the morning.” 

“Ellie-”

“Joel.” She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’m- I’m too fucking tired for this. Please.”

Joel leans forward on his knees, staring at the wall of Ellie’s room for a few long moments. She tracks the slow up and down of his shoulders as he breathes. 

She wants him to insist, suddenly. She knows she’ll fight him on it and say unfair things and make him guilty, but she also wants Joel to force it out of her so fucking badly. It’s foreign; all Ellie’s wanted for ages now is to be able to manage her shit on her own, but with Joel being so kind and the feeling of every second slipping away before she has to leave, Ellie wants him to turn to her and say he isn’t taking no for an answer. She wants him to forget that bad things have happened and treat her like he would’ve earlier on, when she wasn’t so fucking fragile to him- wants Joel to get mad and force her to tell him that she thinks she could go if it didn’t mean being alone again. That she won’t ask him to come with her because she wouldn’t expect him to want to, wouldn’t ask him to leave his life behind, but the idea of being away from Joel feels like watching someone die all over again. She can’t do this without him. The grief of abandonment doesn’t lessen with quantity, it turns out.

“...Alright, kiddo. Tomorrow.”

Joel stands up, patting Ellie’s covered feet on the way, and slides her bedroom door slowly shut.

***

Ellie’s not surprised when Marlene demands a meeting with her. She’s been very difficult this morning, and still hasn’t made up her mind in what is apparently an urgent situation regarding her future movements. According to Tess, who stops by while Joel eats breakfast and discusses things with the rest of Ellie’s detail, the people sending death threats (for reasons ranging from Ellie’s potential gay-ness to Ellie’s nationally televised condemnation of gay-ness) aren’t going to be flexible regarding timing. It’s unlikely Ellie’s actually going to be assassinated, she says, but the risk is significantly more manageable if she isn’t at the epicentre of it all.

“I’m pretty sure I’m more likely to be killed by someone I know,” Ellie says instead of eating her breakfast. “I read that online.”

Tess says, “I’d bet that statistic changes if you’re a political figure,” Which is unhelpful and probably an exaggeration. Depressing, too; Ellie does not want to be identified as a political anything .

“...What are you gonna do when I’m gone, anyway?” She asks as casually as she can.

Tess raises her eyebrows. “Joel didn’t mention that he’d told you I was staying back.” 

“Duh.” Ellie says, trying not to feel like there’s a whirlpool of pain and panic in her stomach eating everything in its path. 

“I’ll be in DC for a couple more months while Marlene keeps complicating shit,” Tess answers, too chilled for it not to sting a bit. Given that Ellie’s know her for the longest (even if she’s spent more time overall with Joel), she’d thought there might be a little more sentimentality between them. “Don’t look so worried, kid- I’ll come visit, yeah? Should be easier when Joel's moved the process forward, got those papers signed.”

Ellie doesn’t know what the ‘process’ is, and she doesn’t want to. If Tess is here, and Joel is here, Tommy’s definitely staying as well. The confirmation doesn’t make it easier to move on, only makes her want to cry- she makes some excuse about needing the bathroom and glares at herself in the mirror until the tears stop threatening to fall.

At least all the worry about leaving everything behind is a distraction from what had previously been occupying Ellie. She still wakes up sweaty and shaking, and Joel has that tight expression that means she’s been screaming she doesn’t-know-what for a few hours, but it doesn’t take her nearly as long to shower and leave her room as it did a week ago. Tess says she thinks Ellie will be fine to head outside in the next couple of days.

Joel has to stand outside the meeting room, but they compromise by having the door open when Ellie’s hands start shaking. Marlene’s expression is less understanding than he thinks it should be, but their almost-argument is cut off when Ellie clears her throat.

“Ellie,” Marlene takes her seat across the desk. Despite the familiarity of it, none of this feels comforting in the slightest. All Ellie wants to do is get into bed and pretend to sleep so Joel will stroke hair away from her face in the gentle way he does. 

“That’s me,” She says instead.

“I’ll get straight to the point, kid: this isn’t a situation where you can spend a few weeks thinking about what you might want to do. I know it’s a shit-ton of pressure, but you’re not a child and I was getting the impression you could handle it. Was I wrong?””

Joel makes a low sound that’s audible even from his spot by the door. Marlene narrows her eyes, thankfully breezing past Ellie’s opportunity to provide a reply.

“In either case,” She continues, “We need to confirm arrangements for the next while, and we need to do it soon. It isn’t as simple as packing a bag and going.”

“I know,” Ellie says emptily. 

“Do you? Because we needed a decision yesterday, kid. The only house we’ve properly cleared is the one in Virginia, and according to your security team you’ve been dubious about going there.” Marlene sighs as if this is the most inconvenient Ellie’s ever been (she knows for a fact it is not). “Tell me more about that.”
“I don’t know.”

The woman’s expression hardens, then softens, then hardens again. “That’s just not good enough, Ellie. We have to-”

“That’s enough-” Joel says gruffly from the door.

“No,” Marlene raises a hand and an eyebrow. “We can have the door open, but you need to stay out of this, Joel.” She returns her gaze to Ellie. “The house in Virginia worked well in the middle of this year. It’s the closest potential location we have which is simultaneously remote enough to suit our needs. What’s the issue?”

Saying I don’t want to replace my good memories with shitty, ones by myself seems like a suddenly childish thing to reason with, so Ellie shrugs. 

“Mosquitos.” She says. 

Marlene gives her a look like, really?  “...Mosquitos.”

“Yeah. I don’t like them.” 

Now, Marlene's face says you’re stupider than I thought. “Mosquitos are a hell of a lot better than being murdered, kid. I can promise you that.”

"Ever heard of malaria?"

Marlene glares.

“...What if I could go somewhere else that doesn’t have mosquitos or-”
“Ellie, unless you can give me a valid reason to triple the amount of paperwork I’m already doing, I’m calling Virginia the best option. We’re approved to move your current security team- those who want to go, and-”

“Who wants to go?”

Marlene tuts. “You’d know if you didn’t interrupt, kid. Your team is confirmed, you’re approved to move, even Frank’s agreed to do your sessions online with an in-person check in at his discretion. Virginia is what’s simplest and in my opinion, best.”

Ellie stares silently at Marlene for a long moment. Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up, don’t-

“Who on my security team?’ She asks, quietly so Joel won’t hear, although of course he will. She hears him shift. “... Not Tess.”

“No, not Tess. She told you about the temporary placement, then?” Marlene nods to herself. “Good. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of months, then she’ll likely end up wherever you are- if she’s willing to go, that is.” She rifles through some papers until she finds what she’s looking for. “Here we go.”

Wherever you are. Wherever you are. She’ll end up wherever you are.

Ellie blinks and misses a whole lot of what Marlene says next, which is clearly important enough to have warranted a reaction she doesn’t provide. “What?” She manages in a voice that sounds very far away.

“I said,” Marlene says, in an exasperated voice, “That we’ll probably use the same living arrangements as we did in the middle of the year. You, Tommy, and Joel in the main house while the rest of your detail are rotating on a weekly basis somewhere nearby.”

Ellie opens and closes her mouth several times. Definitely important.

Marlene’s eyes soften- for a moment, she looks alarmingly human. “I can organise something else if you’d prefer there to be a woman in the house- Joel would’ve mentioned his legal guardianship, but we can have Tommy swap with someone else for peace of mind. I get that.”

She must take a very long time to answer, because the blurry shape that was Marlene stands up and goes to the door behind Ellie. She returns a second later with another blur, Joel, who rubs her upper arms and speaks in a low, warm voice. Ellie doesn’t catch any of it.

She’s sure she heard Joel say he was staying here. She was sure, so sure it hadn’t even been something to hope for. Nobody’s ever followed Ellie anywhere, why would they start now? Especially after everything she’s done, everything she’s put them through. Why would they choose her over their lives here? How can they care enough for that ?

Ellie thinks of Riley, who loved her and was loved by her, and still chose her addiction every time. She thinks of a million foster parents who claimed to want the best for her and to care, and who were all very happy to let Ellie go when a new placement became available. She thinks of her mother, who left Ellie alone, even if it wasn’t on purpose. In all her years alive, Ellie’s never had anyone want to follow her anywhere. She’s always assumed she would be the follow er, chasing her mom and Riley and her dad and yes, maybe Joel and Tommy and Tess as well. She hadn’t even bothered wondering for more than a split-second if anyone would choose her.

I’ll follow you anywhere you go, Ellie had thought a long time ago when Joel taught her how to swim. She’d pushed the thought away because it had only hurt, bright and glowing the way impossibilities are. The way hope is.

***

The snow has melted, replaced by sludge and mud. It’ll come again, Joel says, but they’ll be gone by then. They , as in, Ellie-and-Joel. Gone, as in, driving down to the house by the lake where they will live for a long, long time and maybe even a while after that. 

Ellie is fragile and shaky and slightly convinced that this is a weird dream. The sun, diluted by a sheet of grey clouds, still makes the world too bright when they step outside- not for a long time, because that wouldn’t be safe, but for a few minutes so Ellie can breathe. Joel tells her that she’s doing really well, and Ellie says nothing because she’s going to cry again if she does.

Joel helps her out of her coat. He peels the mittens off her bandaged fingers, then the beanie off Ellie’s head, simultaneously presenting her with the excessively-honeyed tea that’s still only just sweet enough to drink. Ellie stares at him and he stares back until she’s taken a sip, when he sighs.

“So,” He says, smoothing her hair long after she’s sure it’s flat. “I figure we need to talk about all this, kiddo.”

She takes another sip and shrugs, which she hopes conveys something along the lines of are we ever going to stop having Talks because honestly I can’t think about anything right now and I’m a little cold so it’s even worse and I can feel his hands on my face but I want you to hold my face but I don’t want the hurt that’s gonna come with it. 

Also, legal guardian?! Legal guardian? Legal guardian! Legal guardian?!?! 

Joel does not seem to get any of this, because the first thing he says is, “We’ll try to head off ‘round three in the afternoon tomorrow, get there for dinner.”

“Cool,” Ellie says, as if she’d been expecting to immediately start talking logistics, as if any of this is normal. 

In the space between Marlene’s office, her room and here, Ellie’s managed to discover eight new emotions and land back on guilt- it’s much easier than trying to decipher what any of the others meant. Her whole reason for not making Joel shitty for staying behind had been his life here; that hasn’t changed just because now apparently he’s moving, too. He’s still leaving a shit-ton of stuff behind and Ellie’s having a hard enough time with it herself even though most of the shit she’s leaving behind is dead. She can’t imagine what he’s going through, although it occurs to her that he’s never spoken much about a social life. 

“Do you have any friends?” She asks, unintentionally interrupting whatever he’d been saying about packing. Joel raises his eyebrows. 

“What was that?”

“Do you have friends in DC?” Ellie clarifies, “Like, apart from Tommy and Tess.”

Joel looks confused. “Why’d you ask a thing like that?”
“It’s important.”

“It ain’t.”

“Joel,” Ellie begs. “Just tell me.”

He sighs, unexpectedly exasperated. “No, kid, I do not have many friends in DC. This is a hell of a build-up for whatever joke you’re makin’.”

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. However well Joel knows Ellie, he’s really missing her whole point here. Her emotions are still warped by what happened out near the trees, and now she’s got the fucking layers of moving away and Joel coming and ‘legal guardian’ and Ellie’s suddenly worried she’s going to cry. 

“I’m not making a joke,” She snaps, momentarily distracted from her guilt. “I was just asking.”

“Bullshit, kid. You’re never ‘just asking’.” She frowns and doesn’t trust herself to speak; Joel doesn’t mind, taking the opportunity to herd Ellie up to her room and put an open, empty duffel bag on her bed. It stares at Ellie and she stares back while Joel organises lunch. 

She shouldn’t have told him she was fine to be left alone, even if it was for fifteen minutes. Ellie’s sure he’s going to assume that means she can go longer by herself, and maybe her doubt and guilt is contagious and he’ll come back having decided something else. 

She’s all twisted and turned inside out, selfless parts intersecting with selfish ones and contorting Ellie more and more with each passing second. She doesn’t want Joel to leave her anywhere ever again but she wants him to be free of her but she thinks she’ll die if she has to be by herself again but she thinks she’s killing everyone around her by being so hard to manage but she wants to be happy but being happy is a betrayal of Riley.

David creeps his way into her thoughts, because he always does. Ellie’s not sure exactly when Joel gets back, but she doesn’t get back until her lunch has gone lukewarm and she’s curled up under her desk. 

“I was cold,” She says, like it explains anything. It’s not even true. 

“I know, baby.” Joel responds quietly, sitting a few feet away against a wall. It’s because he didn’t want her to feel trapped under here, she guesses. Her chest hurts.

“Sorry,” She manages. 

“For what?”

“You don’t have to come to Virginia if you don’t want to.” There’s a short pause, but Ellie can’t bring herself to check if Joel’s heard her. “I don’t wanna like, steal you away from your whole life.”

Joel takes his time to answer her, which is both stressful and painful. Ellie bites down on her tongue and tries to focus on that sting, instead, but it doesn’t work. 

“You ain’t stealin’ me, Ellie. Not one bit.” She thinks she’s imagined it for a second; even Joel is rarely that gentle outside of a fuzzy mass of memory-dreams that Ellie can’t pull apart. 

“Oh.” She forces.

“When Marlene and I talked about movin’ you away, there wasn’t a goddamn question ‘bout me not coming too. I never woulda let that happen, kiddo.” Joel sighs. “I shoulda let you know sooner.”

“Not your fault.” She says, not sounding like herself at all. 

“It is. I don’t-“ He pauses, and when she looks up he’s rubbing his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger. “I’m not good at this.”

“No,” Ellie pleads. Her voice starts wobbling. “No, no, it’s all me. It’s all my fucking- being fucking stupid, and stuff, and I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to come because like, you live here and-“

“Baby,” Joel scoots a bit closer and they both pretend his joints don’t click. “Listen to me: I’m not goin’ with you because Marlene told me to, or out of some goddamn pity. I’m goin’ because you’re-“ Ellie doesn’t think either of them breathe into the second of silence that follows. “You’re my responsibility,” Joel finally decides, a word that doesn’t mean nothing but doesn’t mean something, either. Ellie accepts it until he corrects, “My kid, I mean.”

That definitely means something. A very big something. 

Ellie squeezes her eyes shut for a second. Fucking hell. 

“Marlene said you were gonna be my legal guardian.” She says, because that’s the least meaningful it can be right now. Strictly a perfunctory use of the phrase ‘my kid’. 

“Yeah. Is that alright? I was gonna discuss it with you later on, but-”

“It’s fine. It’s fine.” Ellie says twice without meaning to. “Is that like, allowed?”
Joel nods, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Tommy got Maria to look it over- she was originally more in favour of Tess, but she won’t be in Virginia for a few months and I was the next option. Legally speakin’, you can have three guardians recognised by the government. Makes it easier for stuff like school, doctor’s appointments, that kinda thing.”

Ellie hasn’t thought about school in months. The idea of doing something as domestic as homework in the kitchen at the lake makes the space between her ribs feel warm and full, but it also makes her face hurt. “...And you’re actually okay with signing on for that?”

Joel looks confused. “...Yeah, kiddo. I’m okay with it.”

“Right.” Ellie blinks and nods, as if acting like she understands will force her brain to catch up. She crawls out from under the desk and pushes her hair out of her face. “You don’t wanna… think about it, maybe? I’m not like, super easy all the time.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Joel says, not unkindly. Ellie shrugs, looking down. “Kid, first off; I’ve had plenty of time to think this over. I’ve been spendin’ every day with you for the better part of this year, you think I don’t know what I’m doin’?”

“Mm.” Ellie replies, because she doesn’t know how she’s meant to answer that. She doesn’t know anyone who’s spent more than three weeks around her and actually been okay with additional time. Even Riley got sick of her after a while.

“You’ve been through a lot- you’re not a difficult kid, El. All the shit you’ve dealt with this year; that’s not your fault. And for the record, ‘super easy’ was never somethin’ you needed to be.” 

She’s not sure what she’s meant to say and Joel clearly doesn’t have any other stupidly wholesome ideas to dump on her, so they sit in silence until Ellie clears her throat and says, “It feels shitty. Leaving without Riley.” Because apparently it’s her turn to be sentimental and awful.

“I get that,” Joel nods. 

“I don’t wanna forget to think about her.” 

“I know,” He says, which is a lot better than if he’d tried to convince Ellie that she couldn’t possibly do something so terrible. “But this city will still be here when you’re back. We’ll find pictures- I ain’t sayin’ that’s the same thing, but-”
“They won’t let me,” Ellie says. “I had one at the start of the year but I think the cleaners took it away when they cleaned out my room.”

“I remember, baby. But your dad ain’t in charge anymore.” Joel says. “You get to choose how your own damn room looks- not that I’m sayin’ you can have Playboy magazines up on the walls, but-”

Ellie groans and covers her face with both hands so Joel won’t see her smile and also maybe cry a little bit. “Oh my god, what era are you from?” She shuffles over so she’s sitting next to Joel and lets him pull her against his side. "You promise?"

"I swear."

It’s not the last talk they have by a long shot. Ellie wishes that she could make the panic attacks stop when they logically should, when she’s feeling fine, but that isn’t the way it goes. She spends most of the night sitting on the floor and trying to breathe.

Joel doesn’t find it as easy to talk about emotional shit as he pretends to, and that suits both of them- beyond rubbing her back and telling her she’s okay, they don’t make a big deal out of most of it. She sits on the bed while he packs her bag and remarks on the unforgivable smell of some items of clothing, and raises his eyebrows at the sneakers with their soles peeling off, and hums his approval at the scraps of drawings she’d shoved in her closet ages ago, and Ellie wonders if he’ll be like this forever. She hopes he will.

When they’re finishes packing and Ellie’s posters stand rolled up against the wall by the door, Joel gets serious again and talks to her about the pills. He and Frank don’t think it’s a good idea for Ellie to go to someone else’s house for a while, until Joel’s sure he can trust her to tell him if something like that happens again. Ellie forgets to resent it, sure that she’ll never want to be somewhere apart from Joel anyway- even if she knows that she’ll get better and he’ll probably pull away. She’s going to get used to this dynamic and start telling Joel things that she doesn’t want to, because it already itches to hide in the bathroom instead of telling him she’s feeling panicked. It’s going to become a problem. 

Then again, Ellie’s had problems. The urge to tell Joel when something’s wrong, or when she’s done something he wouldn’t really like, isn’t exactly the biggest issue she’s had to deal with. It only feels that way in the seconds before he reacts kindly instead of coldly.

***

“Knock, knock.” Ellie grimaces at herself as Frank looks up, grinning.

“I remember you telling me that you hated it when people said ‘knock, knock’ out loud, Ellie.” He says. She shrugs. 

“Whatever, I’m evolving. Are you busy?”

He looks it. His entire office is decorated not with the plants and paintings that Ellie’s familiar with, but with brown cardboard boxes. It’s a little jarring. 

“Not too busy for you. Come on in. How are you?” 

She goes to sit on the floor, but Frank shakes his head and pats the desk beside him. Ellie takes her place and stares at the wall. “I’m not gonna be here for long. Joel’s on my ass about time management skills, he thinks I need a watch.”

“It’s not a terrible investment.”

“I have a phone, you know.” Ellie holds up the device for Frank to see, which feels a little like a novelty. 

“M-hm. Good for you, Ellie.”

“I really just came to say bye,” Ellie blurts out, before Frank can get all communicative and sappy. “I know I’m gonna see you every month online, or whatever, so maybe it doesn’t matter. But this is for sure the last time I’ll see your legs. So.”

Frank chuckles. “So you’re saying goodbye to just my chest-downwards? I don't know if that's-”

“It belongs to Bill now. I’m passing the gauntlet.” Ellie says, pretending to be wistful, and Frank rolls his eyes like he’s not laughing with her. It wasn't not a surprise when Tess mentioned that Frank is dating the guy who used to look after the lake-house, but it's nice. He deserves someone to look after him, too, after all the work he's had to do with Ellie. "Why're you packing up? Don't you still work here?"

"Nobody else in the family is particularly mental-health oriented," He shrugs. "My services are no longer required anywhere but online."

There’s a short pause, and then Frank nudges Ellie’s side, giving her the quiet, warm sort of smile that seems to come so easily to him. How he’s always in such a good mood after dealing with her for almost a year, she will never know. 

“You know, Joel and Tess actually invited us to come down to the lake-house next summer. Would that be okay with you?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You might want to settle into your own home, away from reminders of this place.”

“Frank. When have I ever given any indication that this house isn’t paradise to me?” Ellie widens her eyes, ignoring how good he is at predicting that sort of thing. “But it’s seriously fine. Bill and Joel are both super-serious-Secret-Service guys, apparently, so I can’t wait to see that.”

“They don’t get along easily.” Frank allows, and Ellie snorts. “Clash of personalities.”

"Well, you guys should come visit. You can give Tess and Joel couples therapy."

Frank laughs. "Another can of worms we don't have time to open, I'm afraid," He says. Ellie shrugs and hops off the desk.

"Think on it."

"Before you go," Frank says, standing as well and heading behind the desk to retrieve something from a box, "I have something for you."

"Is it a gun?" Ellie asks dryly, blinking when she sees the plant he puts on the desktop instead. 

Frank looks at her. "Not this time, no. I thought it could be nice to decorate your new room with something living. I'm hoping you'll have plenty more natural light than you currently do."

It's been a point of contention between them that Ellie shuts herself in what is essentially a windowless walk-in closet. "It does," She says, running her fingers over one of the thin fronds of the plant and the white pot it's in. "This is cool."

"It's called a parlour palm. It won't need much water, just a spot out of the sun," Frank tells her. "I thought maybe you'd like to paint the pot yourself, make it your own."

"You're such a fucking therapist," Ellie says by way of thanks. Frank hands her the plant and pats her shoulder.

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks, Ellie. I'm proud of you." 

Oh, Jesus. What's there to be proud of?  

"Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome, I guess." He grins.

***

There are other matters to discuss; ‘Ellie Williams’ will need to become ‘Ellie something-else’ while she’s away, and that’s for Joel to figure out. She’s briefed on all the ways she shouldn’t identify herself as the president’s kid online or in public- Ellie manages to stay present for over half of that meeting, which feels like a feat of nature. She gets a new emergency-alarm phone with actual music streaming apps on it, which Joel acts all surprised about as if Marlene didn’t say he’d specifically demanded that Ellie should have her music. She’s quizzed on emergency procedures until Joel interrupts and says it’s time for lunch. 

“I wasn’t panicking,” She tells him on their way to the kitchen. Joel ruffles her hair.

“I know, kiddo. But it is actually time for you to eat somethin’. We have a long drive this afternoon.” 

Ellie looks down so he won’t see her smile. She imagines this is how Christmas morning was supposed to feel when she was younger, not that she’s into sappy bullshit like that. “ You aren’t even actually driving.”

Joel sighs. “I’m listening to your music. That’s plenty of labour on its own.”

“Only some of the songs are mine! And I avoided the Glee ones.” Ellie lies. She definitely did not avoid the Glee ones. 

They eat burritos for lunch and neither of them comment on any significance. The duffel bag containing Ellie’s entire life passes them on its way to the car, and Tommy and Tess come inside. Ellie bumps her fist against Tess’. 

“Thanks for all the pasta,” She says as casually as she can.

“Don’t get sentimental on me, kid,” Tess half-smiles. “I’ll see you in a couple of months- less, if I can get a couple of days off to come visit.”

“Duh. Gonna miss the pasta, not you.”

“Real nice.” She ruffles Ellie’s hair and that’s the end of it, which is good. There’s nothing to get weird about, nothing to cry over. Ellie thinks she's cried enough to last about a hundred lifetimes.

Ellie’s father is away. There's no opportunity to say goodbye, not that she’d want to. She just wishes he felt something - even if she would’ve said no to the chance to see him again, it would be nice for him to care enough to want it. She can't change him, she knows that. She only wishes she knew why he wasn't different to begin with.

Instead, she sits in the back of the car and watches Christine come out onto the stairs to watch the car leave- she didn’t say goodbye either, but it's different. Two days ago, Maria told Ellie that Christine was the one who reached out to the school David worked at over ten years ago. Already, eleven more women have come forward- it's looking like it's going to be a much longer case for him and his legal team, with Ellie no longer the centre of it. She wishes she was if only it would mean he hadn't hurt anyone else, but Maria says they have to deal with the reality and it means Ellie can stay anonymous since she's the only one still underage.

There's more to be done, but Ellie's only fifteen; she doesn't have to do it all herself. She slides away from the window and tucks her hands into the sleeves of her hoodie, waiting for Tommy and Joel to finish briefing the team in the other car on where they’re planning to stop along the way, and where to check in. There are the bad parts of reality to deal with, and there's this miracle, too, and for this moment Ellie can focus on the good.

“You ready to go, honey-girl?” Tommy grins as soon as he opens his door. Ellie finds herself smiling as well. 

“Duh,” She says. Joel gets in the passenger side and reaches back to pat her knee, then cups his hand for some of the sour-patch kids they bought for the drive. “I hope you know these cost five nuggets per unit.”

“Do they, now?” She sees his lips twitch in the rear-view. Tommy turns on the music and for once, it’s a song that Ellie knows: Take Me Home, Country Roads . She groans anyway and shoves a handful of candy in her mouth. 

“So fucking sentimental, you cowboys,” She mumbles around the sugar.

“You know it, sweetheart,” Tommy grins. He starts singing along. Ellie pretends her ears are bleeding.

Joel meets her gaze in the mirror once more, and his own eyes crinkle at the corners when Tommy’s voice cracks on a higher note. Ellie laughs and watches the blur of DC pass the window for a minute before turning to face the front. It's easier to focus on where she's going, she thinks. She can come back to the rest of it another time.

***

Chapter Text

Ellie spends about thirty more minutes getting out of the car than she wants to (exaggeration), because Joel’s turned into a massive stickler for wearing layers and does not appreciate that the super-fucking-purple coat Maria and Tommy gifted Ellie for Christmas isn’t her style. The argument ends the minute he threatens to upend her remaining fries from the drive to DC into the nearest bin. 

“You’re so annoying ,” Ellie groans, leaning against him as inconveniently as she can while they head towards the frosted willow tree towards the other end of the park. Her converses don’t fare well on the icy ground, but Joel somehow manages to haul her to her feet before she actually falls over every time. Like a spidey-sense, she tells him cheerfully.

“Thought I was more like Batman.”

“Tess only said that to get in your pants, man.” Ellie dodges the half-hearted swat Joel aims at the back of her head. “You’re not even like any superhero. You’re definitely like, the guard at the start of the movie that gets killed by the villain and we immediately forget.”

“No insults,” He reminds her.

“We’ve been over this- you can’t make new-year’s resolutions for other people, and you definitely can’t hold them to it until February. Otherwise I would’ve said yours was-“ Ellie pauses at the look on his face. “-to stay true to exactly the person you are right now?”

“Smart kid.” Joel says approvingly. 

He’s been doing that more- complimenting her. He likes to tell Ellie that her drawings are ‘pretty damn good’, and stick them up around the house, which is incredibly embarrassing and definitely not at all nice for her to see after handing one to him for critique. Whatever. He also says things like you did well, not stressin’ about that math test or nice work, kiddo when she doesn’t completely fail the coursework at her new school. Ellie hasn’t bothered to mention that she usually gets Jesse to lend her his old notes instead of writing them herself, but she doesn’t really think Joel would mind if he knew. He’s pretty relaxed about things, weirdly, understanding when he probably shouldn’t be. 

“Here we are.” He announces when they’ve reached the tree, like Ellie hasn’t got eyes. She gives him a look that says as much, and Joel ruffles her hair. “Attitude, kiddo.” 

Ellie presses her bare hands to the tree-trunk, feeling the bark against skin that stings with the cold. It’s freezing for this late in February. 

“Want some help gettin’ up?” Joel offers. Ellie nods, even though she’s tall enough now to reach by herself. That’s been Joel and Tommy’s work- they’re pretty strict on regular eating these days, even when things get rough, but she’s learned not to get freaked out by it. It’s not a bad thing. She’s hoping to be Jesse’s height by the end of this year, which would only require about a foot in ten months. 

Joel boosts her onto the lowest branch with a murmured careful, darlin’, (embarrassing) and Ellie climbs the rest of the way quickly, anticipating the smell of rotting candy or a rat jumping out on her face. 

There’s something else instead. Ellie’s breath hitches.

“Joel!” She whispers urgently. He interprets it as panic, and is immediately making old-man-sounds like he’s trying to get up to her.

“What is it? Somethin’ wrong? Wait there, I’m-“

“No! No, don’t hurt yourself, jesus.” She snickers. Joel glares mildly. 

“What is it?” He repeats. Ellie looks back into the hollowed-out hole, lowering her voice.

“It’s a nest.” 

In the small, shadowy space, there’s a rounded nest made of twigs, grass, and feathers. In it are several eggs the size of grapes. Ellie can see pieces of plastic peeking over the edges of the nest, remnants of hers and Riley’s collection. Other little trinkets like Riley’s pieces of yarn from the week she tried to learn to crochet, the ripped scrap of Ellie’s favourite t-shirt where it snagged on a branch on the way up- they’ve been mixed into the nest, a part of it as much as the twigs and feathers. 

It doesn’t feel like a loss. Ellie’s got other things that belong to her now; a chair at the dining table between Tommy and Joel; a bedroom decorated the way she wants it; a set of speakers and an ever-growing CD collection to play on them; a polaroid camera that she’s used most days since New Year’s. She’s got a chest of drawers full of clothes that fit her, picked out with Tess’ advice on her last visit. She might have a dog someday, if she and Tommy can convince Joel (and Maria, if she really does end up moving in nearby). Ellie’s got plenty that belongs to her. She can let go of the hole in the tree, now that the baby birds need it to grow up in. 

“Alright?” Joel looks concerned as she carefully hops down from the tree, arms outstretched and ready to catch Ellie if she trips. 

“Yeah.” She says honestly, sitting down on the bench. Joel sits next to her, and she shuffles a bit closer, the way she often does when they’re sitting on the couch in the TV room back home. “It’s a really good spot for a nest.” 

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Joel looks at her. Ellie presses her lips together and shakes her head.

He means a note. That’s what Ellie had told him she was hoping for, late a few nights ago when nightmares had her awake again and the exhausted panic had Ellie telling him more than she does during the daytime. It’s a cliche; finding a note from Riley over a year after her death, when Ellie’s scoured every tiny corner of that hole for months. It was never going to happen. But she’d wished- she’d prayed for something small, a scrap of paper covered in Riley’s handwriting, telling Ellie why she did what she did, and what Ellie could’ve done to stop it. 

Joel knows all this. He settles an arm over the back of the bench for her to lean against. Ellie doesn’t know when it became a habit, only that it’s comfortable and talking about it would remove that. 

“I think… It's okay. I’m still pissed at her, you know? But I wasn’t really expecting anything.” She contemplates. “Would’ve been nice. ‘S probably stupid.”

“Not stupid. It’s alright to have wanted it, baby, I know she’s important.” Joel says. Ellie nods stiffly. 

“Yeah. You know, I’m so- I’m so fucking mad at her. I want to look back on the good bits, and all that, but she left me behind and didn’t even regret it enough to leave a fucking note. I don’t—“ Ellie pauses, swiping a hand under her nose. “I don’t know whether I’m supposed to miss her or fucking- I don’t know, hate her. Not hate . You know what I mean.” 

“I do,” Joel says. “You don’t have to choose, though.” 

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer. Ellie tucks her chin into the neck of her coat to keep warm.

“Do you think there’s something after?”

“After…?”

“Death.” Ellie says, a little self-conscious. “Sorry, weird question.” 

“Not weird,” Joel says mildly. “…I think the rememberin’ is what comes after. That’s the way people keep existing, even if it ain’t in somethin’ as easy as heaven or hell.” 

“So it’s all up to us? Even when they’re gone?” 

“Seems that way.”

“That’s a lot. It’s not fair.”

Joel lets Ellie rest her head on his shoulder. “No, it’s not fair at all.” 

“I wish it was someone else’s job to remember her,” She admits. “I wish it hadn’t always been me. If I cared about taking care of her less it wouldn’t feel like I failed, or something. Is that fucked up?”

“Not at all.” 

“I shouldn’t wish I never knew her. She was the only person who ever gave a shit if I was there or not. Like, the only one who ever loved me enough to really, actually want me to be happy.” She says softly. “It’s dumb to reject that.”

“Not the only person.” Ellie almost misses it. She looks at Joel sharply. He meets her gaze steadily. “She wasn’t the only one, and it wasn’t your only chance to be looked after. Can’t have you thinkin’ that way.”

“Joel,” Ellie says, unsure what she even means by it. “I can’t- um. What do you want me to say?”

“It’s alright. Don’t have to say anything.”

She does, and she has options, but she won’t. There’s a long silence. 

“I wish he’d been the one who cared about me,” Ellie says, and Joel nods because she doesn’t need to say her father’s name for him to know who she’s talking about. “I wish he’d wanted me to leave ‘cos he thought it was good for me, and it hadn’t just been for him. Like, if it had been because he wanted me to get better or because of all the stuff earlier, maybe I wouldn’t be so mad about it.”

Ellie hasn’t communicated much with her father since she left- at all, really. But she has snuck into Joel’s room and gone through his emails, where she learned that the president wants her out of the picture for as long as possible because she is ‘bad for his image’ and ‘not representative of the ideal his family presents’. She thinks Joel was more mad because she saw that than the actual reading-his-emails deal (though it was pretty close). Weirdly, it didn’t make her much sadder to have the confirmation, but she is mad. Ellie spends quite a lot of her time feeling angry. She says as much.

“It’s alright to feel that way,” Joel says gently. 

“I know. I know, but I still wish I wasn’t. S’tiring, you know?”

Joel nods. “I know, baby.”

“It’s not like I need people to like me, ‘cos I don’t, but if I had to choose anyone I would’ve chosen him. The first time I met him, I wanted him to see me and I wanted there to be like, a line between us that would make everything make sense.” Ellie rattles on, feeling less and less coherent. “And then- and then maybe it like, made sense ‘cos I thought it was my purpose to die for everything he did, but- but then obviously that didn’t fall through.”

“Hm.” Joel acknowledges.

“And now- actually, I don’t really think that’s my purpose anymore. Not that I’m gonna try to do it again,” She’s quick to add at the look he gives her, “But it still feels like I should exist for a reason- to die for someone else, or something.”

“Maybe,” Joel says carefully, “Your purpose ain’t supposed to be somethin’ you die for. Maybe it’s somethin’ you go on livin’ for.”

“Was Sarah your purpose?” Ellie looks at the scar on Joel’s head as she speaks. He’s quiet for a moment. 

“She was one of ‘em.”

“How did you keep going? After-” She looks away. Selfishly, Ellie doesn’t want to see everything it does to Joel to talk about this.

He sighs. “I didn’t know how- not for a while. But I guess… living is findin’ something new to go towards, to fight for. You’re allowed to choose what your purpose is, it ain’t decided by anything but you.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Ellie says.

“Not easy. Simple, more,” He corrects. “Just have to try. Didn’t Frank say that- each day, one at a time?”

“I guess. Yeah,” Ellie nods. She looks at Joel sideways. “....Maybe I would feel like each day was easier if…”

“If what, El?”

“If I had a dog.”

Joel rolls his eyes. “We are not getting a dog.”

“But Tess said some of the puppies on that rescue website were cute! And her birthday’s coming up!” This is true- Ellie’s already bought Tess a spa day, but she’s pretty sure that the spa day will be even more relaxing if Tess is extra stressed about toilet-training a puppy beforehand. “Please, please, pleasepleasepleaseplease-”

“Ellie-”

“Tommy already said he’d drive me to the shelter to pick one!”

“Did he, now?” Joel raises his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, like, basically almost!”

“‘Basically almost’ doesn’t sound like a yes.”
“Come on, Joel, if you just-”

Joel holds up a hand, and Ellie falls silent. He sighs. “ I will go to the shelter with you, if you’re set on it, but that does not mean we are gettin’ a dog. We both know that if you took Tommy he wouldn’t leave without one.”

“That was kind of the point.” Ellie gets up, grinning. “Joel, it’s gonna be so good. I’ll walk it every day, I’ll feed it, I’ll brush it and like, teach it a whole bunch of tricks. Can I name it Will Livingston? Like a tribute kinda thing, maybe.”

“You will not be naming this hypothetical dog ‘Will Livingston’, kid. Christ.”

“Maybe if it’s a really old dog, I could name it Joel.”

“Funny,” He deadpans. They reach the car, and Ellie does her usual song and dance about wanting to learn to drive, but Joel’s been strict about waiting until she’s sixteen. It’s a well-kept secret between Tess, Tommy and Ellie that they’ve been letting her drive up and down the driveway at home for weeks. 

Joel turns on the Pearl Jam song he’s been trying to teach Ellie on his guitar as she buckles her seatbelt. She thinks maybe she should look back, or something sentimental, but in truth Ellie said goodbye a while ago. She presses a fist to her sternum and exhales the pain.

***

Seven Months Later

* *

Ellie sits beside Joel, her hair still damp from the lake. Usually he’d tell her off for getting the cushions all wet and for letting the dog on the couch, but they’re both too preoccupied today to start arguing about those things.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

The judge’s voice is slightly tinny through their old sound system. Ellie turns it up, and Joel takes the remote from her to turn it back down again. She doesn’t bother protesting. They wait in silence.

For the better part of the past six months, Ellie’s been in battle with both Miller brothers as to whether she should be allowed to watch David’s complicated and brutal trial as it’s been extended over and over again. Joel is staunchly opposed, Tommy thinks she should only be allowed to watch the pivotal moments, and Ellie would’ve chosen to sit in front of the TV every single day if they’d permitted it. Unfortunately, useless things like school and mental health got in the way; to be fair on both men, the first time Ellie saw David’s bandaged face on the screen she missed school for the rest of the week. 

Thirty-one victims have testified against him in court, and fifty-four on paper. They were all around Ellie’s age when it happened to them, mostly from the boarding school David taught at. Even Tess and Maria, usually her champions, didn’t want her to hear those recollections of crimes all-too-similar to Ellie’s own experience. Worse, often, since they had nobody coming to their rescue. Joel has taken to hiding the TV remote so that she can’t sneak downstairs and watch it behind his back. 

“Before we reach the verdict, I have some comments of my own I would like to make,” Tommy swears lowly under his breath. He’s made no secret of his frustration with the length of the trail, which has been extended by David’s repeated insistence that attempted assault (on Ellie) is the only crime he is guilty of, and two separate changes in the judge presiding over the case. Nearly every week, more victims have come forward to testify against that claim. Ellie is less angry than exhausted by the time it’s taken to reach this point; six months of David being held without bail, being slammed in the media (alongside her father, who has claimed no prior knowledge of his alleged wrongdoing), seems like a miraculous step towards justice for all his other victims. 

The judge speaks for a while, and most of it is a blur. She uses words like “ despicable”, “ manipulative”, “devious”, none of which cause a reaction in David. Maria tells Ellie he’s denied every plea bargain offered to him. Even seeing his face is still enough to make breathing more difficult. 

“You preyed upon those who you knew to be most vulnerable, when they were most in need of help. You sought out positions wherein you could most easily inflict this violence on young girls- you are a sick and depraved individual, sir, and it is therefore a privilege to deliver this verdict today. I hereby find you guilty of counts one, two…”

Nobody breathes. Callus, better known as Callie, noses at Ellie’s hand.

Ellie remembers the face of almost every victim corresponding to the counts the judge reads out, their grief and their anger and their pain. She remembers hearing their testimonies and hating that there were things tethering them together beyond what he’d done to them- that he’d so clearly had a set of traits he looked for. Many of the women were smaller, brunette or auburn-haired, from difficult backgrounds. Almost every single one talked about struggling with depression, anxiety, addiction, when David got them. There are some who have had family testifying on their behalf, who did not survive the years after what he did to them.

“ It is the judgement of this court, on counts one, two, five, eight, fourteen, fifteen, nineteen, thirty-three, and sixty-one of criminal sexual misconduct, to sentence you to fifty-two years in prison without parole. Sir, based on my own judgement of the impact of your crimes and your lack of remorse, I am giving you one-hundred and seventy-five years.”

The sound of camera shutters in the courtroom is all anyone hears for a moment. 

“I have just signed your death warrant.”

*

Leaning against Joel, Ellie watches the afternoon sunshine turn slowly golden, then blue. He’s got his arm around her shoulders, his hand periodically smoothing hair back from her face. She thinks maybe she’ll fall asleep out here.

She’s been a mess since the sentencing this morning, which they all knew would happen. Most of it is relief; Ellie’s been plagued since leaving DC by nightmares of David somehow being found innocent, or of being freed within his lifetime, and finding her here. She’s not stupid enough to think that they’ll stop immediately just because that’s now impossible, but she knows she can wake up and tell herself it’s not going to happen anymore. 

Callie is still swimming, retrieving sticks and rocks from the lake and depositing them on the porch where Ellie and Joel sit. Joel likes to complain about her, grumbling on about the mess she’s making and the puddles she’ll leave all over the house, but he’s really just bitter that Callie is obedient for everyone but him.

He loves her, really; Ellie’s caught him inviting her onto this bench with him when he plays guitar in the evenings, sometimes into the nights. She hears the chords from her room if she cracks her window open a bit. 

Ellie’s still getting used to having a permanent home, to having friends kind enough to forgive her for ghosting them for several months, and to look past who she is; still, she cannot escape the feeling that in a short while, she’ll be moved. But Joel’s arm is holding her close and the bench is solid underneath her. A bird with a speckled back and bright yellow stomach wakes her up every morning. For now, Ellie is here, and she is loved, and although she’ll miss these evenings someday, she’s pretty sure she’ll be missing them from somewhere she wants to be.

“What happens now?” She looks at Joel. He’s staring at the spot where Sarah scratched her name more than twenty years ago. 

There’s a long silence that seems to extend itself across the flat mirror of the lake. 

“The rest of your life, Ellie.”