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Tommy meets Joel at his job site for the day, set on walking with him back to his place. Today Joel is building new beehives for their growing population. Carpentry skills are used for a wide variety of things in Jackson. Tommy is still on paternity leave, but he and Maria are both going a little crazy stuck in the house together, so he’s decided to have some quality brotherly bonding time while Maria gets some alone time to read during Silvana’s nap.
“How’re the bees?” Tommy hollers when Joel approaches the street
“Thank god, I don’t have to deal with the bees, only their houses.”
“What, scared of a little sting?” Tommy teases.
“Nah, just watched The Wicker Man one too many times.”
Tommy grimaces. “Fair enough. That shit was freaky.”
They’ve barely walked a few yards before a boy runs up to them, panting and looking very nervous, and starts talking to Joel.
“Sir, it’s Ellie, she’s- well, we were over at the stables and she kinda freaked out?”
Joel takes off immediately, startling to poor kid who got sent to play messenger. Tommy starts jogging after him, waving the kid to follow. He looks a little reluctant to run again, already out of breath from the trip from the stables, but he follows too after a few breaths.
Joel runs faster than Tommy’s seen in a long time, and now that he’s a father, he knows exactly why. Would it have killed the kid to be a bit more specific? Whatever it is, he knows it can’t be worse than whatever Joel is coming up with.
As they slow down to get to the stables, Tommy tries to clarify, knowing Joel is too single-minded to do so.
“What do you mean she freaked out?”
“She was in the supply closet, and it’s kind of a finicky door? It blew shut on her and it locks automatically. I told her I was going to get Sharon, to get the key. But she went berserk, slamming on the door, screaming. Sharon got the door open but she sent me to go find you.”
Tommy nods. He doesn’t know what exactly Ellie was taken back to, but he was in the military long enough to know a thing or two about triggers. It was bad enough when it was a guy in the same shit position as you, but no kid Ellie’s age should ever have that kind of minefield in their head.
When they get to the supply closet Ellie is frozen. Having apparently fought out all her energy, her face is blank in a way he recognized from the VA. Ellie isn’t there with them.
Tommy knows a lot of her triggers are from traveling with Joel, but given the confusion on his worried face, Tommy is guessing this was from before that. That almost makes it worse. At least traveling across the ruined country was meant to be dangerous, most of what they’d come across pretty unavoidable. But Ellie was raised in a QZ, no infected, no raiders. If she was traumatized in the QZ, it was because people decided to hurt her, for no real reason. He knows what FEDRA is like, knows it’s naïve to hope she had even a neutral childhood. Doesn’t stop him from wishing though.
Joel is crouched next to her, giving himself enough space to duck if she lashed out, but still close enough to be there for her when she came back to herself. Tommy watches as he comforted her, feeling a bit awkward standing there observing what feels like a private moment.
When Ellie does come back to herself, it’s slow, nothing at all like the violent way he knew she woke up from dreams. She still seems lethargic, as if her panic attack had drained all her energy.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak out.” Her face is still expressionless, but Joel moves to hold her, sure at least that she knows who he is. Tommy, too, steps a little closer, though he leaves enough room in the doorway for her to not feel trapped.
“No, baby, don’t apologize. It’s all okay.” Joel whispers to her.
“You wanna tell us where you went?” Tommy asks softly. Normally he wouldn’t be so bold, but he gets the sense Ellie was too tired to care much about what she said at this point, and it might be easier for her to talk about it now rather than when she’d worked herself up again. Sure enough, she lazily looks up at Tommy and answers.
“Thought I was in the hole.”
Tommy doesn’t know what the fuck the hole was, but he’s suddenly feeling the urge to take a field trip to Boston and have a… talk with the people who raised Ellie. From the look on Joel’s face he feels the same.
“What’s the hole, honey?” Joel asks, leaning away enough that he can see her face.
“You know, like, um” Ellie seems to be searching for the word, and Tommy’s blood runs cold once she finds it. “Solitary confinement?”
Both men in the barn are still reeling when Ellie goes on.
“Little room, lights always on. You’d get one meal a day while you were in there, but like, slid through a slot so you couldn’t see anyone. You could hear people though, it was always loud as fuck.”
Joel’s face has gone white and Tommy feels the same way. Solitary confinement was fucking inhumane when they did it to prisoners Before, now FEDRA was using torture techniques on children? It’s clear his brother was at a loss for words, not that he can blame him, so Tommy tries to pick up the slack.
“How- how long would they keep you there?” Tommy doesn’t even care if Ellie hears him choke up at this point.
Ellie glances at Tommy, looking confused, though he doesn’t quite know why.
“I dunno, usually like 24 hours for minor infractions.” Ellie gives a little mostly-vacant laugh. “Once me and Riley stole a jar of peanut butter from Mr. Peterson though, and we each got a week. It was totally worth it, that shit was good.”
“Honey, you know that’s never gonna happen here, right?” Joel asks from her side.
“I’m not stupid.” Ellie huffs. “I’d have seen it if there was a hole here. ‘Sides, you’re all so weird about that stuff.”
“I’d say what’s fuckin weird is putting kids in goddamn solitary.” It seems to slip out of Joel unconsciously, and though Tommy agrees, he can tell Ellie isn’t in the right headspace for unpacking just how fucked up her childhood was right now. Though it feels like shoving a fighting feral cat into a bag, he puts away his righteous fury, something he knows Joel isn’t capable of doing right now, and puts on ‘Uncle Tommy’.
“You know I think I saw a jar of peanut butter back at your place last time I was over. You ever had it with apples?”
Ellie shakes her head, looking excited, and gets up to walk back. Joel is hovering even more than usual, and he sends Tommy a grateful look when Ellie isn’t looking. Tommy answers with a little salute. What are brothers for.
-----------------------------
“C’mon, kid, I need help filling out these forms.” Joel pleads from the kitchen table.
“Or, we could give up because the forms are too hard and I could come on patrol with you.”
Joel shoots her a look. Does she really think that’ll work? “If you think filling out a two page form is too hard, you definitely need to go to school.”
Ellie huffs and rolls her eyes, but she does head over to the table and look at the forms. Joel, too, starts scanning them. Maria had dropped them off after dinner that night, and it was his first time really reading the questions. They were mostly standard, name, birthdate, emergency contact.
Wait.
Birthdate.
“Fuck.”
“What?” Ellie asks, concerned.
“We’ve been together a whole year. I met you in July, it’s August now.” He says, processing.
“So?”
“So, I missed your birthday. You’re fifteen.” Joel is kicking himself, thinking about a 15 year old girl spending her birthday on the road, not even telling him. Did they walk all daylight hours of her birthday? Eat cold cans or squirrel instead of birthday cake? Though those, he supposes, would have been the good days for her birthday. She could have turned 15 on one of the days he yelled at her, one of the days they starved, one of the silent days after Henry and Sam, or god forbid, Silver Lake.
“Why do you look like that, it’s not a big deal.”
The response only kills Joel a little more. When it was Sarah’s birthday, she always told everyone, even strangers on the street. For Ellie, even with how excitable and talkative she was, to not even mention her birthday to him? It goes against everything he knows about kids.
“Of course it’s a big deal, it’s your birthday. When was it?” Joel asks, hoping it was while they were in Jackson, or even on the road to Salt Lake. Even if she had an unacknowledged birthday, he hopes it was at least a good one.
Ellie shrugs. “Legally or actually?”
“What does that even mean?”
Ellie sighs. “You know my mom died the day I was born. When Marlene dropped me off at FEDRA, she didn’t exactly leave a note telling me when that was.”
Joel’s stomach drops. She hadn’t told him her birthday because she doesn’t know. Somehow that’s even worse.
“I was dropped off in the end of August as, like, a newborn, apparently I still had that... thing? On my belly button?”
By now, Joel should be used to conversations where Ellie nonchalantly said things that knocked the wind out of him. It’s hard, sometimes, to hide his reactions enough that she doesn’t feel like a freak, and he can tell from her face that this conversation is testing his limits of keeping a straight-ish face. But Jesus, a newborn? From all he’s learned from her stories, FEDRA wasn’t capable of caring for older kids, he can’t imagine willingly putting an infant in their care. Silently, Joel wishes he had killed Marlene.
“So your birthday is probably right around now?”
“I guess. Why are we so anal about my birthday, we missed yours too.”
Usually, the mention of his birthday would hit Joel with memories. Right now though, he needs to stay in this conversation.
“Yeah, well, I’m old I’ve had a lot of birthdays. They don’t matter as much.” He can tell Ellie isn’t buying it, but he moves on. “You said something about legally?”
Ellie makes a face. “FEDRA had a protocol for dropoffs. I was young even for their standards, but it’s not unusual for them to get a kid too young to know their own birthday, and like I said, they don’t usually come with notes. One girl I knew was fully six years old but I guess too dumb to memorize her birthday.” Ellie laughs at that. Joel doesn’t find it very funny. “So they just gave us all January 1st as our birthday. There was a whole horde of us, and it sucked. All the kids with birthdays thought they were better than us, just because their stupid parents died instead of getting rid of them. Like it made any fucking difference. No one, like, did anything for them, it only mattered for what grade you were put in.”
“They gave you a January birthday even though you were born in August?”
“Yeah, and that sucked too. I ‘turned one’ when I was like 5 months old. It didn’t matter so much when I was older but I always used to be small and slow for my age. Apparently I didn’t start talking until I was ‘two’ and shit. Totally unfair.”
Joel’s happy place used to be a ranch. Miles of open country, no bothersome neighbors. Now, Joel thinks, his happy place might just be him and those FEDRA fuckers, alone in a room with lots of knives.
“So I guess legally I’ve been fifteen since January but actually, I’m probably fifteen in like a week. Do you want to just put today? It doesn’t really matter to me.”
Joel thinks for a moment, then writes down a date. August 12, 2009. “Next Saturday. Sorry kid, you’re fourteen for another week.”
Ellie rolls her eyes. “Whatever, dude.”
-----------------------------
“Why does she cry so much?” Ellie makes a face as Silvana starts crying again.
“Babies can’t talk yet, so they have to let us know what they want other ways, like crying. Once the baby’s old enough sometimes you can even tell what they want just from how they cry.” Tommy explains. “For example, right now I’m pretty sure Silvana wants something I can’t provide.” He says, laughing.
“Yup, give her here.” Maria says, reaching for the baby and pulling her shirt up to nurse. Silvana takes a few seconds to latch and then quiets down. “She’s probably sleepy, too, it’s almost her bedtime.”
“I know babies can’t talk, I just don't remember them crying this much.”
“Remember? When were you around babies?” Joel asks from his chair.
“I was never really around babies, I was too ‘disruptive’ to get put on nursery shifts, but one year my room was right next to it. There were like 20 babies in there the whole year, and they hardly ever cried. Enough to be annoying with the thin ass walls, but it would be like one or two of them every few days. Silvana cries more than all of them put together.”
Maria gets more and more horrified as Ellie speaks, and she knows from the confused looks she’s getting from Joel and Tommy that it's showing on her face. Luckily, it seems Ellie herself is intently focused on Silvana nursing, and Maria quickly steels herself into what she hopes is a friendly looking face before speaking again.
“Well I’m just glad she’s talking to us. I’d hate for her to need something and not get it because we don’t know about it.” She’s talking about more than Silvana now, and she hopes Ellie picks up on it.
“I guess, yeah.”
Regardless of whether Ellie understands what she’s saying, Maria knows she has to make sure Joel understands what Ellie just said. It’s clear from their confusion that neither he nor Tommy knows what Ellie just revealed. Maria thinks she knows just the way to get Ellie out of the room for a minute.
“She’s definitely tired, Ellie do you want to put her down for her nap, give the poor old people a rest?”
Ellie looks equally excited and nervous. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, you remember how, right?”
Ellie nods, and Maria hands her the baby. She holds her like an expensive vase, afraid of dropping her or holding on too tight. It’s a shame she never got a nursery shift, Maria thought. For all her worries when Silvana was born about Ellie’s clumsiness and feral nature, she’s so sweet and careful with her cousin. The baby has taught her how to be gentle in a way Maria guesses she’s never had the chance or the reason to be before. Ellie has a protective streak a mile wide, and she absolutely dotes on Silvana. Maria has no doubt the two will be inseparable.
Once Ellie disappears upstairs, though, Maria’s mind is back on what she’s just learned about her. The men in the room are clearly waiting for her to speak.
“Ellie was raised by FEDRA, right? She would’ve been in that nursery as a baby?” Maria thinks she knows the answer to this question, but she’s still hoping she’s wrong. Hoping Joel will tell her that no, Ellie was raised by loving parents who died tragically when she was older.
“She said FEDRA told her the umbilical cord was still attached when she was dropped off.” Joel said, ruining those hopes.
“Fuck.” Maria said. That was even worse than she’d thought. Ellie couldn’t have been more than three weeks old. She pictured Silvana left on a doorstep like that, and the image is so horrible she can barely stand it.
Tommy leans in and puts an arm around her shoulder, sounding worried. “Where are you going with this darlin’?”
Maria pulls herself together and looks at Joel. “When I was a prosecutor, I had to do some research for a child neglect case, and there was a study about these kids in an orphanage in Romania, after the war. It was horrible, I mean, attachment disorders, years long or even permanent changes to the brain. I mean you could see the physical damage on a CT scan and these kids didn’t even meet the legal definition of abuse, just neglect.”
Joel’s face is hard, and it’s clear he doesn't like where she’s going with this. “Your point?”
“My point is, the reason they studied these specific children is that a journalist walked into the nursery of the orphanage and it was silent. The babies didn’t cry. Like what Ellie was saying. And the reason, was that they learned it didn’t work. These babies were fed, burped, changed, on a schedule. Silvana cries because she knows we’ll pick her up and comfort her, feed her, fix whatever is wrong. No one picked up these babies when they cried. No one came to hold them, change their diaper, give them a bottle. So they just stopped crying.”
Tommy is now fully crying next to her, and Maria feels not close behind. Joel sits with a stony face for a minute, before getting up without a word and walking towards the nursery.
“Joel?” Tommy asks.
“I’m gonna go and fucking hold my baby.”
Maria can’t argue with that.
“Fuck.” Tommy breathes, and Maria can’t help but agree. “How could anyone do that to a kid? A baby?”
“I don’t know.” Maria answers honestly.
“I want to burn that place down.”
Maria would’ve been concerned at the amount of rage in his voice if it hadn’t been exactly what she’s feeling too.
“Can’t say I disagree.” Maria takes a second to breathe. “But Boston’s pretty far.”
Tommy snorts a little. “Yeah.”
“Tell you what though. We can’t undo what those FEDRA fuckers did. We can’t get revenge. But the kids in that study? There was one thing that did help them. The kids who recovered? Who had average brain scans later in life? They all got placed in permanent homes. Loving families.” Maria pauses. “We can be there for her now. Teach her to cry again.”
Tommy sighs. “Yeah. Yeah I think we can do that.”
-------------------------
Ellie is pissed. Everyone had been acting so fucking weird all day. Joel wasn’t working today, and she was looking forward to hanging with him at home, maybe watching a movie or kicking his ass at Boggle. But he was acting shifty all morning, and he only got weirder when Tommy showed up. Apparently, Tommy’d been pulled for a work shift after one of the cooks got sick, and Maria was out on a patrol shift, her first since the baby. The baby was sleeping, and he wanted Ellie to go over and watch her. Ellie would usually leap at the opportunity, Silvana had quickly wormed her way into the teen' heart, but Joel had said she should go over by herself, he could help Tommy so he could get off shift earlier. She’s not jealous, or anything, but it does sting to see him choose Tommy over her. The fact that she’s only got weeks left until he’s shipping her off for the day to fucking school doesn’t help.
But Tommy’s back now, taking the baby from her arms and offering to walk her home, despite Ellie’s grumbles that she’s more than capable of walking herself to the house she can see from the damn door. She’s in a sour mood, and just about to snap when Tommy opens the door for her, a thing she can do herself, thank you very much, but when she looks inside-
“Surprise!”
Maria and Joel are sitting at the table around- is that actual cake? Maria is supposed to be out on patrol, and looking at Joel and Tommy, it doesn’t look like they were doing field work.
“What’s happening?” Ellie asks, confused.
“Happy Birthday, kid.” Tommy says, clapping her on the back.
Oh, Ellie realizes. Today is the Saturday Joel put as her birthday on the school forms. She knew Joel was acting kinda weird about missing her birthday, but she hadn’t expected them to actually do anything for it. She tries to remember books she’s read with birthdays, and something about a surprise party comes back as a hazy memory. Ellie’s anger about the weirdness of the day melts away as she sees the knit garlands and the cake on the table, with real candles.
“No way, do I get to blow them out?” She asks, suddenly excited. She doesn’t really understand the candle thing but she’s read enough to know that’s what you do.
“Hold on, kiddo, gotta light ‘em first.” Joel says smiling from the other side of the table. “Here, sit down.”
She does, against her body’s wishes as she’s nearly vibrating with energy. Joel lights a match and lights the candles, using a lit one to get the rest once the match runs out. There are fifteen candles slightly crowding the cake, and she wonders if that’s a coincidence or a part of it.
The adults start singing, and she wants to cry. By the time they finish, she is a bit, and Joel quickly kneels down next to her.
“You ok baby?”
“Yeah,” she chokes out. “Riley sang that to me once, said her mom used to. I thought she made it up.”
Joel gives her a sad smile, and she knows what he’s thinking. Ellie wipes away the tear.
“Can I blow them out now?”
“Almost, you gotta make a wish first.”
“And you can’t tell us what you wished for!” Tommy interjects quickly. “Then it won’t come true.”
“Damn, who knew birthdays had so many rules.”
Ellie thinks for a moment, then blows out the candles, getting them all in one breath. This, she wishes. Just this.
The cake is fantastic. She’d had cake for the first time last month, some sort of anniversary party for the founding of Jackson. The party was overwhelming, but the cake- Ellie didn’t think she’d ever had something so good. It was rich enough that she was secretly grateful to Joel for cutting her off, her stomach already aching from what she did have. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course. She hadn’t finished her frosting then, though, and this cake was barely frosted. It could have been a coincidence, but looking at Joel she’s sure he remembered. He was good like that.
After she finishes her cake, Maria announces it’s time for presents. Right, Ellie remembers, that was a birthday thing.
Maria and Tommy give her a gift first, wrapped in patterned cloth.
“People used to wrap things in paper, but we’ve had to reuse a lot more since then.” Maria offers. It’s hard to imagine having such excess that people bought paper just to wrap something.
Opening it up, Ellie finds a pair of overalls. She saw Maria wearing a pair a while ago, and remembers telling her they looked insanely comfy. Her whole new family is like that, she thinks. She’s not used to being so noticed, so remembered. It makes her warm in a way so unfamiliar to her to have adults who think of her like that. The only one who ever did before was Riley.
“Thank you so much, they look cool as fuck!”
“Ellie, not in front of the baby.” Joel chastises.
Maria laughs. “It’s the girl’s birthday, she can say fuck.”
Ellie sticks her tongue out at Joel. “Yeah, it’s my fuckin birthday.”
Joel rolls his eyes. “Alright, my turn.”
“There’s more?” Ellie asks, eyes wide.
“It’s your birthday, you think we’d only get you one present?”
“One more than I used to get.”
Everyone looks a little sad at this, and Ellie is a little mad at herself for killing the mood.
“We’ll just have to raise your standards a little.” Maria replies.
Joel makes a few noises upstairs, then yells down. “Close your eyes!”
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t cheat.” says Tommy with a smile. Ellie begrudgingly closes her eyes.
“I couldn’t exactly wrap mine, you’ll see why.” Joel says. “You remember John Denver?”
“Country roads?” She asks, eyes still closed. Is it a new tape for her walkman maybe? Why would he not be able to wrap that?
“Yup,” Joel confirms, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “Sounds a hell of a lot better with a guitar.”
Ellie’s eyes fly open in disbelief. Joel had promised to teach her if he ever found one, but she didn’t really expect he ever would. Sure enough though, there in his hands was a guitar, looking to have all it’s strings.
“How?” It was all she could think to even ask.
“Music store, long ways out. It’s a bit off the patrol route, and far enough that it’s a bit of a pain to bring stuff back, or the whole town’d be outfitted. Maria’s considering sending a group out for more though, everything’s in decent condition.”
“Riley said when the outbreak happened people looted necessities, not necessarily non-essentials.” Ellie says, eyes still fixed on the guitar.
“That’s right, she was a smart girl. Most luxury stores are a lot less picked over. Ones that are rural enough are mostly just left as they were.”
Joel hands her the guitar, and she hesitates to reach for it. “Go on, kid, it’s yours.”
They sit and talk for a minute longer before Tommy and Maria say their goodbyes, leaving just her and Joel to bask in the day. As the evening gets long Joel plays her Poems, Prayers, and Promises on her new guitar, promising to start her lessons tomorrow. She leans against him, trying not to fall asleep.
“Good birthday?” Joel asks as her eyes close.
“The best.”
————————-
School has started in Jackson, and Ellie is determined to not be a fucking baby about this. It’s not that she’s scared, (ok maybe it’s totally that she’s scared) it’s just that school sucks. It always has. It’s silly that with all she’s been through, the little schoolhouse of Jackson puts more dread in her than almost anything, but she’d take anything outside the gates over starting classes right now.
Ellie tried to convince Joel to get her out of it, telling him maybe she could just start patrol early, or go hunting more. Take on more shifts in the stables. She’d keep busy, learn real skills and help the community. It’s not that Ellie wants to hang at home all day, she just can’t go to school. But ultimately, Joel wants her to be as close to normal as a fucked up apocalypse kid can be. The hope in his eyes when Maria brought up school meant Ellie knew she wouldn’t win on this one.
For all his excitement about the normalcy of it all, however, Joel seems almost as nervous as her on the first day. He wakes up early to make breakfast, hovers while she’s eating, and walks with her to school. Ellie clings to his arm the whole way.
It doesn’t escape her that of the other kids gathered outside the schoolhouse, the only other ones with their parents are under twelve. Ellie doesn’t care though. She wants Joel here. She wants Joel to pick her up and take her back home, tell her she was right, and school is a terrible idea. As much as she’d never tell him, she wants Joel to come in with her, sit at the desk beside her or stand in the back of the class, anything but leave her alone with these kids.
And they are kids. That’s one of the worst things, just how painfully young everyone her age seems. Their time on the road aged her, making her see and do things none of the Jackson kids can even conceive of. She shot a man and watched him cry for his mother on the floor. Most of these kids have never shot a rabbit. As much as she’s come to love Maria, sometimes her words on that first day come back to Ellie. Kids around here don’t look or talk like her. They also aren’t armed.
Even before the road though, FEDRA made you grow up fast. The ‘carers’ were there to keep you alive, nothing more, and they had no trouble reminding kids who got a little too comfortable. Ellie was shown how to tie her shoes once, when she was four years old. No one has ever done it for her again. When there were storms, it was Riley’s bed she crawled into, quietly as she could or the dorm minder would bust them. But Riley was just a scared child herself. No one held them and told them it was alright.
Though she won’t admit it, as much as she hates the too-young kids of Jackson, it’s a hatred born of immense, ugly jealousy. As Riley used to tell her, at FEDRA Ellie hadn’t known what she was missing. Now she has Joel, she knows what it feels like to be cared for. She daydreams, sometimes, about him finding her earlier. Maybe even being her real dad, raising her from the start. To have him tie her shoes, not because she can’t, but just because he loves her.
Ellie had skinned her knee a few weeks back, and Joel had asked if she wanted him to kiss it better. She looked at him like he was losing it, and told him that sounded like a one way ticket to infection. The falling look on Joel’s face as he realized Ellie had never even heard of kissing an injury stuck with her.
For Joel, she’ll go to school. She’ll pretend it’s not bordering on comical for her to sit in the class with all the children who think she’s one of them. She feels like a hulking monster or a feral cat sitting in a desk. What fucking point is there for her to learn math, or literature, or science. She can tell you all about the brain, how it looks sprayed onto a wall or pounded into the floor. How hers was supposed to save the world, but they’d have to cut it out of her skull. The diagram in the textbook isn’t accurate, she wants to say. It’s pink and white, not grey. These are things the kids in her class don’t know.
The day does pass, If slowly. And the next day, and the next. She hides in the bathroom for a while. Leaves early once. She thinks Joel will be angry when she opens their front door an hour before he’s due to leave to pick her up. Instead the look of care on his face and the way he takes her into his arms immediately almost make her cry.
She got a cavity once, when she was a kid. Lost the whole tooth, and now there’s just a gap where her molar was. They didn’t waste silver on military school brats. Sometimes when Joel looks at her like that her teeth hurt. Maybe never being cared for has made her like that tooth, a thing that can only rot when exposed to sweetness. There is an emptiness in her like the gap in her teeth. A cavity in her chest.
The other kids don’t seem to notice. The Ellie who loved Sam and Riley wants so badly to respond to their attempts to reach out, but she can’t bring herself to. She snaps and she’s mean and she can’t even explain why she’s doing it. Maybe she just wants it so bad she can’t bear the idea that she could if she tried.
Still, she is trying, in a way. She sits through class most days, does her best to pay attention. The girl she snapped at her first day in Jackson is in her grade, and though she’s seen her before in the stables, she finally learns her name. Dina tries to include her even when she knows she’s being an asshole. In return, Ellie bites down most of her instinct to snap at her on bad days. Mostly she’s just quiet.
And the fact that Joel picks her up from school every day, at 3 on the dot, waiting for her as if to tell her that he remembers? The way he asks how her day was and listens no matter what she has to say in return? It almost makes it worth it.
------------------------------
Joel is surprised, on September 12th, to come home from patrol to a cake on the kitchen table. Ellie has been voracious in her learning of cooking and baking, trying every delicious food she’d never gotten before Jackson, so the cake itself isn’t that unusual, although usually she told him all about her ideas for baking experiments. Sometimes he choked them down with a smile on his face, but she had gotten much better since she started, no longer leaving lumps of baking soda for him to discover.
What was unusual about this cake, however, were the candles in it.
Ellie rounds the corner and sees Joel, eyes going wide.
“Oh shit, you’re home! Hold on, let me get the matches.”
“Ellie what’s going on?”
Ellie comes back with matches and a sheepish look.
“I was over at Tommy’s a while ago, right after you threw me the birthday party, and I was asking him about yours, and he, uh, told me when it was. Don't get mad at him though, I pushed. I’ve seen the board for Sarah and Kevin, and I get why you don’t want to celebrate. I wouldn’t exactly feel like celebrating the day Riley died. Besides I kinda get the whole ‘someone dying on your birthday’ thing.”
Ellie is looking at him warily, and he knows she’s thinking about that night in Jackson, her last attempt to relate to his loss. He swallows down his guilt and nods.
“I reckon you do.”
“Anyway, I figured neither of us have had very good birthdays, and it worked really great for you to pick a new one for me, so I just thought... maybe I could pick a new one for you too?” Ellie is really nervous now, shifting in an awkward mix of staring him down and looking anywhere but at his face.
All Joel can do is take her into his arms. What in the world had he ever done to deserve not one, but two perfect daughters who took care of him like it was their job instead of his.
Ellie cuts his thoughts off with an exaggerated choking noise. Yup, Joel thinks, a perfect daughter.
“Sorry, kiddo. I’m just happy.”
Ellie beams. “Sit down before you collapse, old man, I gotta get something.”
“You better be quick or I’m gonna eat this whole cake.” He shouts up the stairs after her.
“I’ll kick your ass!” She responds, getting a laugh out of Joel.
Ellie books it back downstairs after a few seconds, ignoring Joel's shouts to be careful, and slams down a rolled up paper, tied with a piece of twine. Her burst of energy seems to turn from excited to nervous in a second though, as he goes to unwrap the present.
“I’d have been happy with just the cake, I get a present too?”
Ellie shrugs as he opens it. “It’s not very good, you don’t have to like it.”
She says something else that Joel doesn’t hear as he unrolls the paper and looks at what she’s made. He’s known for a while that Ellie was a brilliant artist, even if she’s usually very shy about showing her drawings to anyone. But this drawing- not only is it beautifully done, the subject brings such immediate tears to his eyes that he’d be embarrassed if he were capable of any emotions other than love in this moment. On the page was himself, Ellie tucked in her usual spot under his left arm. His right arm was occupied as well, wrapped around Sarah. Looking just like she did 20 years ago, that big grin he’d always miss seeing. Ellie must have modeled it after the photo Tommy had given him, and the thought of her studying it to get her face just right makes his chest hurt in the sweetest way.
Joel and his girls. A family portrait.
Coming back to himself, he can hear Ellie talking. “Like I said, it’s not very good. And if you’d rather have one with just you and Sarah, I can do that too, I just-”
“Ellie.” Joel cuts her off.
Again, she’s pulled into a too tight hug, but now she relaxes into it.
“How could I not love it? Both my girls. Why would I want a picture with just one of my daughters instead?”
He hears Ellie choke a little bit, not exaggerated like last time, but one he knows means she’s crying too.
“God, you’re so sappy in your old age.” She mutters, voice only wavering a little.
“Yup.”
Ellie disentangles herself from him once she’s gotten over her bout of tears that Joel pretends not to notice. They eat cake, Joel moving the picture far enough that no one gets frosting on his new prized possession, but keeps it where he can see it. He tells Ellie they’ll have to ask Tommy where they can find a frame, and Ellie’s smile is huge. He’s already planning on showing it off to anyone he talks to in the next month. Showing everyone his girls.
------------------------------
For once, Ellie doesn’t hate school. The 15-17 group is having a hunting lesson today, outside the wall. Ellie likes Jackson, most of the time, but the classroom is claustrophobic and the expectation of staying still and quiet reminds her too much of FEDRA. She’s no good at school, never has been, and the year she spent on the road puts her behind her peers, most of whom have been going to this school for years, if not their whole lives. She leaves early a lot.
Out here, though, she’s in her element. Most of her favorite memories are out in the wilderness, sleeping under the stars, hunting to survive. The Jackson kids may have the advantage in a classroom, but none of them can hold a candle to Ellie’s skills outside the wall. For the younger teens in their group, this is their first hunt. The 12-14 group goes for foraging trips in the fall, but they always return before dinner. For two of the other 15 year olds, this will be the first time they can remember that they’ll spend outside the walls of Jackson.
Joel is chaperoning, and if she tunes out the chatter, she can almost pretend it’s just them, on one of their hunting trips or out on the road together. He had signed up to be a chaperone as soon as she brought home the permission slip for the trip, telling her she was crazy if she thought he was gonna trust her idiot classmates to keep her safe. She had laughed, and called him paranoid, but secretly she was just glad he’d brought it up first. Ellie doesn’t have any more faith in her idiot classmates than Joel does.
“What are you hoping to bag?” Joel asks from beside her. Once they start the real hunt, they’ll have to be quiet, but it’s about an hour’s ride to where they’ll set up camp. Patrols have been double checking the area for a week, making sure it’s clear of raiders or infected. While they do have to teach them to survive, kids are precious in Jackson, and no one wants to be responsible for something happening to any of them.
“A bear.” Ellie shoots back.
Joel rolls his eyes. “If you shoot a bear, I’m gonna have a heart attack, and then who’s gonna help you haul it back to town?”
Ellie pauses for a second, considering. “Leslie?”
Joel glances over at Leslie, another chaperone. She’s a big butch woman, a firefighter before the outbreak. They’ve been on a construction crew together more than a few times.
“Fair enough, kid.”
“Nah, I’d miss you too much. How ‘bout an elk?”
“Alright, now that I’d help you with.”
“No need, I think I’ll just get Leslie to help anyway. Get someone who’s back isn't about to give out.”
Ellie gives him a big grin, and he glares back in a way that lets her know she’d be getting a shove if they weren't both on horseback.
“You know Leslie’s like four years younger than me right?”
“Mmm, that doesn’t seem right.”
“Little shit.” Joel says, but his voice sounds fond.
She does get an elk in the end. Ethan fucking Taylor almost fucks it up, sneezing right as she lines up her shot, but her aiming has gotten a lot better since the winter, and she manages to fire her rifle before it bolts. It’s not as clean a shot as she’d like, but it stops it moving enough that she can cut it’s throat to put it out of it’s misery.
The chaperones take the opportunity to teach the kids field dressing, and Ellie preens. Other kids have had a successful hunt, lots of rabbit and two antelope, but her catch is by far the biggest. It’s a buck, a five pointer, and it’ll bring in at least 200 pounds of meat, enough to feed the whole town.
Once the elk is split up, Joel walks over and ruffles her hair.
“I gotta hand it to you, you said you’d get an elk.”
“And to think, you doubted me.”
She’s joking, but Joel’s voice changes and she knows he’s dead serious. “Never. I’m real proud of you kid. Always am.”
Ellie falls silent and leans into him, soaking up the praise. They walk back to camp together, each with a hunk of elk.
Dina runs up to them as soon as they reach the tents.
“That was amazing! I mean, pretty gross, too, but mostly so cool.”
“Thanks?” Ellie responds, a little taken aback by her energy.
“A bunch of us are getting together at the movie theater when we get back for a little party- no alcohol, I promise, Mr. Miller.”
Ellie snorts a little at that, both at Joel being referred to as ‘Mr’ anything, and the idea that he would really care if there was alcohol.
“Anyway, you should come Ellie! It wouldn’t be much of a party without the woman of the hour.”
Dina nudges her arm as she says it, and Ellie blushes for a reason she refuses to analyze. She turns up to Joel, not sure if she’s looking for approval or an excuse to get out of it.
“Ellie’d love to go.” Joel tells Dina before turning to Ellie. “Let the old people deal with the meat, I’d say you’ve earned yourself a party.”
“Awesome, I’ll see you there!” Dina gives Ellie a big smile before walking off.
Ellie glares at Joel. “I could have answered for myself.”
“And give you the chance to bail? Absolutely not. You’ve been spending too much time with old people, I’m worried you’re gonna start getting bad knees through osmosis. You need some youthful energy.”
“The fuck’s osmosis?”
“I thought you went to school?”
“It was a really shitty one.” Ellie responds, and they both know she’s not talking about the schoolhouse in Jackson.
“Yeah, kid.” Joel says, pulling her into his side. “It really was.”