Chapter Text
He remembers Sarah’s first breaths.
Now he’ll remember her last, too.
He wants to snarl at the cruelty of it, the world trying to make her a mere chapter in his life when he held her and knew it was for her it had all been written.
She came into the world in a burst of noise, tiny lungs capable of a kind of screaming he couldn't believe. It had felt like a marvel, so much sound from such a little thing.
It seems impossible that she could have died so quietly.
Tommy had joked about it just last week when he was carrying her to bed, how she would get too big to be carried around soon.
Now he carries her for the last time and knows she never will.
*
He wonders, of course he does, what life after the end of the world would look like if he still had Sarah, his girl who haunts him like a ghost he can’t bear to chase away.
Would it have motivated him to make a more gentle life for her? Would it have given him a reason to feel the same passion that drives Tommy to leave?
Or would it have made him more cautious, having something precious yet to lose?
It’s easier, after all, to grind through one day and into the next, when he has nothing that he really fears the loss of that deeply.
It means there’s nothing to look forward to either, but. Well.
You give up a few things in an apocalypse.
*
He sees them sometimes and wonders if he would have been one of them, parents hanged for crimes committed for love of their children.
A mother stealing food for a hungry toddler, a father exacting vengeance for a wronged child, so many people doing stupid, reckless things for lack of other options.
People make crazy choices when they love someone.
How much simpler it is, that he no longer remembers what that feels like.
(A lie, but the only thing that lets him make it through each day).
(If he thinks too long on how it feels to love his daughter even when she’s been cold in the ground for a decade, it would make it harder to not join her).
It’s easier, this way, having nothing precious left to lose in an ugly world.
*
Smuggling is old hat at this point. Tess makes arrangements and does the talking, he stands back and looks ready to kill someone.
(And, occasionally, he kills someone.)
They’re like a machine at this point, six years into working together and ten years after the end of the world made this all necessary in the first place. There’s no real thought to it, no second guessing about what smuggling supplies away from a government orphanage says about them. He won’t hurt a kid directly, won’t participate in the lucrative trade of smuggling them, either.
But their contact said they had supplies they’d pay to get moved.
So they’re here to move them.
End of story.
Almost despite himself, he can’t help but compare the courtyard of the building to what he remembers of Sarah’s preschool. She’d stayed with his mom until she was two, but after that, he’d started enrolling her in an actual preschool for the sake of socializing her. She’d hated it at first, and he’d felt like a monster peeling her off of his leg and making a getaway while her minder tried to distract her with blocks while she screamed “Daddy!” like she was being led to her death.
She hadn’t screamed “Daddy” at her actual death.
She’d been beyond that.
He shakes his head, forcing himself to refocus. For the sake of staying in the moment as Tess negotiates, he catalogs what he can see that says that this is the orphanage for the younger kids.
It’s not…a lot.
There’s no bright, primary color murals, no toys, no playground equipment, no bubble machine, no trees, no grass. He’d picked Sarah’s daycare because it had looked happy, looked like the type of place he could see his daughter laughing in. He’d seen kids tumbling over each other and playing, and he’d imagined his daughter as one of them.
This gray courtyard doesn’t make him imagine anything but small children in coal miner uniforms, trudging in and out with soot-streaked faces and pickaxes. It’s an absurd mental image, but this doesn’t look like the type of place children play. He’s not sure what age this building is for, but their contact had mentioned it in passing as “for the little ones,” so he’s guessing toddler up to maybe kindergarten. If he remembers correctly, they stop being little ones after that.
Then again, it’s been a decade since he’s had a kid, so it’s possible things like that are different now.
He perks up at Tess’s raised voice. She briefs him on the details of their job before they go, but it tends to be better for everyone if he remains out of it. He has much less patience for negotiation and playing nice than his partner. Tommy used to help out, oscillating between silent backup and co-negotiator. He was good at it, even, good at-
It doesn’t matter. As of two months ago, his brother is a Firefly, and it turns out the thing he’s best at is driving his older brother fucking insane with his goddamn hero complex.
“-not enough ration cards to even get me out of bed,” Tess says, in the very specific coaxing voice she uses when she’s toeing the line of flirting. He resists the urge to look amused when the guard–a new recruit whose near-baby face says he’s no older than 20–gives him a surreptitious look, clearly a little nervous about being flirted with when her presumptive romantic partner is right there. They’re not romantic, him and Tess. He gets the feeling that she wouldn’t mind if they were, but neither does she press. They don’t own each other. They fuck now and then because it feels good and they trust each other more than they would anyone else for the sake of a few orgasms here and there, and they share a bed like they share every other resource. He trusts her with his life and she seems to trust him the same, but anything beyond “We smuggle together, and if anyone touches you, I’ll kill them” is more than he has in him to give. Tess doesn’t seem to mind.
It’s enough for him.
He hopes it’s enough for her.
The guard seems to settle a bit when he doesn’t react beyond the same silent glowering, and the way the kid’s posture goes cocky and loose clearly says he thinks he’s getting one over on an older man, like Joel is simply too stupid to realize what’s happening. He knows this game, a young buck high on his own new manhood thinking he’s tougher and more desirable than the old guard. It’s something Tess plays to full advantage, tossing her hair over one shoulder and pressing a hand to the kid’s arm in a playful touch that makes the kid’s cheeks go pink. He watches Tess work the guard over like putty in her hands and wonders how many times she’s done the same thing to him. They’re honest with each other, the two of them, but Tommy used to make comments about him being whipped, the same way he did when Sarah’s mama-
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself firmly. Tommy’s gone. Tess isn’t Julia, isn’t his high school sweetheart, isn’t the mother of his child, isn’t in the ground just like her daughter.
Jesus, he’s gotta get out of this goddamn courtyard. Even with the only evidence of kids a battered old swingset and a couple partially-deflated balls, it’s clearly picking at memories best left untouched.
He silently wills Tess to work just a little faster.
*
His first reaction when the backpack he’s carrying starts fucking wiggling is irritation. It wouldn’t be the first time some juvenile fucker riding high on their own goddamn importance because FEDRA gives teenagers guns and calls it a day tried to pull a prank. He can only fucking imagine what it is this time. A fucking raccoon? Bag of snakes?
He slings it down, irritated, and freezes when he hears an “Ow!”
An “Ow!” said in a very, very young voice.
“No,” he says at once, voice hard, like just saying it can make it not true. “Fucking-no.”
This isn’t happening, he thinks, as Tess stops to walk back to him. There’s no goddamn way there’s a fucking kid in-
The top of the backpack unsnaps and pops open.
And out emerges a tiny head with huge brown eyes and her hair in a little ponytail messy enough that he just knows she did it herself.
A little girl where there should have been drugs.
Jesus Christ.
*
The one blessing is that the kid doesn’t cry at finding herself surrounded by strangers, even though there was a brief threat of screaming when they tried to take away the knife she somehow has, the knife she still has in her possession with the dubious promise that she won’t play with it.
The curse of the situation is that instead, she’s fucking chatty.
“-and then a plei-pleo-plia-” He rolls his eyes as she struggles through a word too big for such a little mouth, giving Tess a dark look even though he knows she didn’t have anything to do with this.
Tess gives him a look right back, a dare to say something.
Getting back to their apartment without getting seen is going to be a bitch, and he’s already thinking they might end up using a bolthole for the night. They should be back already, but instead they’re backtracking to return a FEDRA orphan–who’s introduced herself very chirpily as “I’m Ellie!” and repeated it with decreasing good humor when he refuses to use it–because apparently, a fascist government can’t be bothered to hire nursery minders who won’t misplace a child and send her off to be mildly kidnapped by smugglers when she stows away in a backpack.
Of the many ways the fascist fucks in charge of their government are bad at their jobs, this one just happens to be personally annoying.
“Enough talking,” he finally snaps halfway through a lecture of whatever the fuck a brontosaurus is. “It’s time to be quiet now.”
She sticks her tongue out at him, but she obeys.
For about five minutes.
*
Just their goddamn luck, the gates around the entire orphanage complex are shut when they get back there. They only got through in the first place because their contact made sure they would be, but they’re locked tight now, and the only people out and about are guards they don’t know running rounds and making them duck from spotlights. The kid clearly doesn’t fully understand the seriousness of this situation and how very fucked she would be if they were slightly worse people than they already are, but she crouches like a kid playing pretend, and it’s enough.
He eyes the gate, wondering if they could just toss her over. Unfortunately, he thinks barbed wire might beyond the skills of what he judges is a 4 year old based on her ability to talk.
An ability she’s demonstrated at length.
He knows what Tess is going to say when he sees her turn to him from his peripheral vision, talking over the kid who seems to be chattering mostly to herself, at least low enough that he can’t pick it up with his right side facing her. He doesn’t need to hear Tess. He already knows what’s coming.
“We have to take her home with us for tonight.”
He feels roughly ten years older than he did when he woke up this morning.
*
He’s determined that the kid’s going to walk on her own two feet, hopefully to teach her a lesson about sneaking into bags in the future. He has no plans to be actively cruel to her, but she’s an orphan in the care of a fascist government that raises child soldiers. It’s not like she should be used to coddling, and he’s certainly not looking to give her a taste for it.
And then they get to a section that involves climbing over large chunks of rubble.
She gives it her best shot, scrambling carefully over the first bit with soft grunts of concentration, tiny face set as little hands try to find where to hold and little legs try to stretch farther than they’re able to. He stays close, just to grab her in case she falls because there’s no way he can return her damaged, but he leaves her to her own devices. She’s probably done worse than this. She’ll be fine.
His determination (and ignoring of the looks Tess is giving him) lasts until they get to a section that only adult legs can possibly manage. He scowls, looking at them, but no matter how he tries to think of it, there’s no way a child as small as the girl can make it.
God fucking damnit.
Tess, obviously, already came to the same conclusion, and he glares at the faint trace of amusement on her face.
“You hold the kid, I’ll handle the flashlight,” she tells him, taking charge as she usually does.
“You hold the kid, I’ll handle the flashlight,” he corrects. This is one time he’s not willing to do as he’s told. Not with this.
“No,” says Tess mildly, just looking at him placidly as he glares.
Finally, he sighs. He won’t win a battle of wills against her, and they both know it.
“C’mere,” he tells the kid, not quite looking at her. She doesn’t move, and when he does look at her for lack of other options given the lack of response, she’s watching him warily, like he’s tricking her with his hands extended. “Now,” he says, barely keeping the impatience out of his voice. He doesn’t have the time or energy for this. Jesus, how the fuck is this his life?
She flicks a quick look to Tess and then edges closer, lifting her arms only when he pushes them up, like she doesn’t know what to do. He rolls his eyes as he lifts her up under her arms, but it’s a muscle memory he doesn’t think he’s capable of forgetting that has him settling her securely against him without thinking about it. She’s tense, unlike any other kid her age he’s ever held, like she isn’t used to being picked up. Readjusting her slight weight on his hip, he stoutly refuses to consider what this tells him about what her day to day life looks like. She’s not heavy, not remotely, but the warm weight of a child against him is a sensation so familiar and foreign at the same time that he’s hyper-aware of exactly where they’re touching, of the familiarity of a small child in his arms.
He focuses all of his energy on not being aware of any of it.
“You alright?” He asks her tersely. He doesn’t even know why he asks it, but he hasn’t held a child in so long–not since a good month before the outbreak, when he spent a neighborhood barbeque being used like a jungle gym by the Robins’ toddler–that there’s a stupid part of him that thinks he might have forgotten how to do it right.
The girl wiggles a bit like she’s trying it out, settling in, and he resolutely doesn’t feel anything about it. Finally, she nods, once.
“All good,” she reports, with a solemnity that’s bizarre on such a tiny face.
Good enough for him.
*
“Aren’t there drop boxes?” He asks Tess in a low voice when they’re halfway home. He’s pretty sure he remembers something about that, drop-off points for unwanted children. He’s heard faint infant cries in dark areas some nights where there’s certainly no adult around who could be tending them, but he’s always told himself sternly that he was imagining it, that his shit brain was just summoning memories of Sarah’s cries to torture him with what-ifs. The alternative was imagining a baby in a dark box, cold and confused and alone, and he has enough shit to haunt him without creating new material. “We could leave her in one.”
Tess gives him an impatient look before she checks around a corner and leads them on. He’s still holding the kid even though this section is relatively clear. It’s faster, not having to account for little legs. It’ll get them off the streets faster so they can figure out what the fuck they’re supposed to do with this very unwanted contraband.
(And it’s not at all that he can’t quite bring himself to set her down, not at all.)
“Too small,” Tess says, “they’re for babies, not for-”
“I’m not a baby!” The kid pipes up, with all of the offense of someone fresh out of babyhood and in deep denial about it. “I’m a whole four!” She holds up her fingers to demonstrate, using a total of eight to really make her point by illustrating with both hands.
There’s a dangerous flash of amusement across Tess’s face, and he hardens his own expression decisively. He won’t be charmed by a precocious little brat talking about how grown she is. He needs his partner to be with him on that page. Tess sees his look and rolls her eyes.
“No strays,” he reminds her, an adage that she came up with years ago during Tommy’s brief quest to get a dog.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she throws over her shoulder.
He doesn’t find it especially reassuring.
“What’s a stray?” The girl asks.
“Something annoying,” he tells her brusquely. “No more talking now.”
*
He pauses, just briefly, when they need to pass the hanging wall. It’s never a pretty sight, and this round of bodies has been hanging in hot weather for four days. Even for someone with his frame of reference, it’s pretty fucking gruesome. It’s not his job to shield her. She’s a FEDRA orphan training to become one of the people who will be putting bodies up on that wall one day. Hell, they probably visit the hanging wall for their recess. It wouldn’t surprise him.
Still, he’s not FEDRA, and even irritated with his own weakness, he wouldn’t feel right about letting a 4 year old look at rotting bodies swinging on ropes.
The kid has been looking around, bright-eyed and curious, so there’s not even a way he could just turn her so she wouldn’t see it. She’s clearly having a grand time on her little prison break.
“Put your head down,” he tells her gruffly, and she turns her head to him, tilting it again in question like she did before. “Your head,” he says impatiently. “Put it down on my shoulder.”
“Why?” She asks him, not challenging, just genuinely curious.
“Uh…” He looks to Tess for an answer that isn’t “because there’s corpses hanging on rope.”
“There’s something pretty ugly up ahead,” Tess says, cutting in. “It’s not for little kids.”
“Like the whipping room?” She asks, words that should never leave such a small mouth said easily in a child’s innocent voice. “It’s really scary,” she says in a near-whisper, leaning in like they’ll have eavesdroppers out here.
“Something like that,” Tess says. “Just put your head down, alright? We’ll go by real fast.”
She still hesitates, and he’s ready to go, so he reaches up to press her head down, ignoring how she’s small enough that it fits easily in his palm. She resists for the briefest moment, but then she obeys, nuzzling just a little closer. He freezes. The last time he felt anything like this was with Sarah, when they were-
He starts walking, ignoring the questioning look Tess is giving him. He can feel the tickle of eyelashes and the warm rhythm of exhales and inhales against his neck, and it’s taking all he’s got not to just drop her to get away from the sensations trying to drag him back to the worst goddamn night of his life.
*
They get home, and Tess fucking abandons him to go drop off part of the haul to a dealer four doors down who serves as one of their buyers.
Thus leaving him alone with the kid.
Who is apparently both thirsty and stubborn.
“I can do it!” She insists, pushing his hand away when he tries to take the cup from her after handing it to her in the first place at her insistence. “I got it!”
The way she’s barely even reaching the sink even on her tiptoes calls her lie at once, but he’s not looking for a fight about it. Why the fuck should he care if she’s thirsty? If she wants to be stubborn about it, she can struggle all she wants. He certainly doesn’t fucking care.
“Whatever,” he tells her, moving to sit on the couch. She’ll wear herself out and have to eat some humble pie sooner or later.
Still, hearing grunts of effort gets irritating after a while, and he’s only been sitting for about five minutes before he’s up again.
“I can-” She starts, seeing him coming, but he’s not interested in this debate. The sooner she gets her goddamn water, the sooner he can stop listening to her do it. She goes stiff the same way she did when he picked her up before, but he lifts her enough to lean over the sink.
She tips her head back to look at him, and he nods his to the faucet, impatient.
“Get your water,” he tells her.
She does, with an admirable amount of fine motor control for a kid as young as she is, he observes without meaning to. She holds a hand up to make him pause when he starts to put her down, task accomplished, and he rolls his eyes but obeys as she chugs the cup halfway empty and then reaches to fill it to the top again. He’s allowed to set her down this time, and he does, backing away at once. She chugs about a third of the cup and then stops for breath.
“Ah,” she says, clearly an imitation of someone else. She gives him a mischievous little look. “That’s some good ship.” The last word is enunciated with enough precision and delivered with such clear trouble-making glee that he knows she thinks she’s saying a very different word.
He doesn’t bother to correct her and just retreats to the living room again.
(It’s not cute, her using ship instead of shit.) (Not even a little bit.)
*
“You sleep on the couch,” he says firmly when he sees the little pest eyeing their bed through the doorway, clearly intrigued by a mattress larger than a government orphanage cot.
Too fucking bad.
“What’s a couch?” She asks, tilting her head like a puppy, sounding the last word out like it’s foreign.
“A couch is where Joel’s gonna be sleeping if he doesn’t stop acting so grumpy,” Tess tells her with a smile, giving him a warning look.
He gives her an unimpressed look in exchange.
*
Predictably, she tries to sneak into their room that night. He’d clocked her as a limit tester, and she proves him right about an hour and a half after they’ve gone to bed. Tess doesn’t even wake up, but he’s alert at once at the first tug of the blanket, nearly cold clocking her until he registers the size and height of the shadow trying to haul herself up onto the mattress on his side of the bed.
He hauls her up with his hands under her arms–making her squeal with surprise loud enough to make Tess stir–and tosses her (with more care than he’ll admit to) back on the couch.
“You sleep out here,” he tells her firmly, squishing her down with one hand into the cushions to make his point, before he returns to his childfree room.
(He very carefully doesn’t think anything of all about the quiet, gleeful giggling that follows him all the way back.)
(Even when two more invasions mean more pest removal, the energy of it making it clear that she’s no longer just being nosy and is instead playing a game here to get tossed again.)
(Best not to encourage her.)
“Stop winding her up,” Tess grumbles on the fourth tug of their blankets of the night. It’s very clearly not about the kid being curious about the mattress to judge from the suppressed giggling and the force of the tugs. She’s very obviously just looking to get tossed again. “Put her back.” With that, she rolls over, burying her face into the pillow and leaving him to baby wrangle.
He gives Tess a look she can’t see in the darkness, as if this is his fault and not hers for not letting him cram their unwanted bonus into a baby box and call it a night.
Still, he obeys.
*
On the sixth interruption, he reaches blindly, irritated, and ends up grabbing her around her upper arm as he tugs her behind him, kicking his covers off with no regard to whether he wakes his partner or not, truly irritated now. Enough getting carried. She’s walking back to the couch on her own two feet. They’re done with this game.
Immediately, though, the energy of the room changes.
She goes so stiff that it’s like dragging a statue, and he stops at once, mildly alarmed that he’s actually hurt her. He hasn’t touched anyone as little as her in a long, long time, and for a horrible, sickening moment, he thinks he’s lost track of his own strength and damaged her entirely by accident.
Then he feels her trembling.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, like a kid repeating a line she’s memorized.
The tremulous terror in it makes him feel a little sick.
“Please, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
He realizes he still hasn’t let go of her and does so at once, taking a half-step back entirely on instinct. She drops at once, curling into a little ball like she’s bracing for a blow. He doesn't even know what to do, staring at the dim outline of her, still able to see her shaking in the low light. She starts rocking herself in what’s clearly self-soothing behavior, but the increasing desperation of her apologies says it isn’t working well.
He flexes his hands against the instinctual urge to pick her up, to touch her gently, to soothe, to tend.
He’s not that man, not anymore.
On what must be the twentieth “Please, I’m sorry,” though, he can’t resist muscle memory, and he kneels, reaching out and resting a palm against the baby fine softness of her hair. She flinches at once with a stifled little squeak of fear, and he can feel her shaking increase.
“Shh,” he says, without realizing he’s going to. “You’re alright.” It’s gruff, as comforting goes, but this is something he hasn’t done in a decade. The routine of it is rusty. He jumps when he feels a hand at his shoulder, but it’s just Tess, kneeling beside him.
“Hey, honey,” she calls softly. “You’re alright.”
He blinks at her, a little stunned. She calls him “Tex” when she’s being playful (or when she’s irritated), but he’s never actually heard her use a petname. It comes out…unexpectedly easily. Ellie peeking up at them over her knees refocuses him, though, scant moonlight glinting on tear tracks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Please don’t get the belt.”
He feels like someone might have hit him with a belt.
“I’ll be good,” she says, a child’s plea, desperate and afraid. “I-I’ll be good, I promise!”
“You’re being good,” he tells her, a desperation play. “You’re being very good, Ellie. You’re not in trouble.”
Slowly, she comes to a sniffly halt.
Tess gets a washcloth from the bathroom and hands it over, and the kid wipes her face clumsily before neatly folding it and handing it back.
She returns to the couch without prompting after that and doesn’t interrupt again for the rest of the night.
He knows because he doesn’t fall asleep.
*
None of the night seems to haunt her the next morning, but he’s slightly less gruff with her than he’d originally intended to be. She’ll be out of their hair this evening when they return her. There’s no need to be a dick to her.
She eats her ration block with a speed that makes him slide her plate away, afraid she’s going to choke on it. At once, her hand darts out, grabbing his wrist and digging tiny nails into his skin harshly. There’s a challenge in her eyes, a fierceness that has no business being on such a young face, and he has a sudden memory of one of his aunt’s dogs, the one who would snap at anyone getting too close when it was eating, afraid of it getting taken away. It’s how Ellie looks now, as she grabs one edge of the plate and tries to slide it back.
“That’s mine, motherfunker, ” she says, with a clear attempt at sounding very ferocious and instead sounding like a kitten hissing. She makes a whining sort of growl when he slides the plate further away.
“I’m not taking it,” he tells her, trying to get her claws off of him and failing as she digs her fingers in harder, pulling herself forward to try and reach despite the fact that she’s a good foot too short for it. “You’re gonna fuc-you’re gonna choke,” he catches himself. Her glee with “ship” the day before and her use of “motherfunker” now clearly says she’s looking to swear, and if she doesn’t know any yet, he’d rather not be the one to teach her.
(He doesn’t care for his own part, but he can’t shake last night. He’d rather not give her more reasons to be handled in a way that makes her curl into a terrified ball at someone grabbing her arm.)
“It’s mine!” She insists, and she all but snatches away the piece he breaks off for her, glaring as she stuffs it all into her mouth like she’s a hamster, her cheeks puffing out as she chews angrily.
It’s not cute. Not even a little.
“Small bites,” he tells her. The moment her mouth is empty she snaps her teeth at him. He rolls his eyes. “You can have more,” he tells her. “No one’s taking it from you. You just gotta slow down.”
“You don’t eat fast, you don’t eat,” she says, with the rhythm of a mantra, as they engage in a brief tug of war over the next piece he hands her. “Give it!” She demands, balling up one tiny fist and hitting his arm with it. It’s about as effective as a fly bouncing off of glass.
“Why are you bullying the kid?” Tess asks, walking into the room while finishing buttoning up her shirt.
“I’m trying to keep the piranha you made us bring home from choking,” he says dryly, cursing and dropping the piece in surprise at sharp pain in his hand. Focused on Tess, he hadn’t noticed the kid leaning forward to bite him until it was too late. She snatches the food off of the floor and stuffs it into her cheeks like a chipmunk again, retreating under the table like a gremlin, glaring up at him.
He resists the urge to punt her like a football.
Tess huffs a laugh even as she reaches for his hand to check the damage. He glares at her balefully while she does. It’s not bad–she didn’t even break skin–but he’s not thrilled about there still being a clearly feral child still in their house. He looks back over to find one tiny hand blindly searching across the table top. Tess snorts and then kneels, making Ellie scramble back at once until her back hits the center support.
“Hey now,” she says. “No biting.”
“He took my food!” She protests, and she leans around enough to glare at him again.
He gives her an unimpressed look in response.
Tess rises and then moves to their cabinets, and he lifts his eyebrows when she lifts out a bundle of ration blocks. Ellie crawls out to the other side of the table and watches with only her eyes exposed, sharp and observant. Tess drops them onto the center of the table.
“You want more, we have more,” she says, and the kid’s eyes go wide, like she can’t believe the bounty in front of her. For his own part, he’s a little displeased at the lack of rationing of supplies, but there’s only so much damage such a small kid can do. She’ll be going back to the place that made her a goddamn food vacuum tonight. They can withstand some gobbling until then. It’ll be like a last meal on death row or something.
That thought nearly makes him wince reflexively.
Instead he channels his discomfort into shredding a ration block into smaller pieces and handing them one by one to the feral stray refusing to come out from under the table.
It feels wildly similar to when he used to take Sarah to feed animals at the zoo.
*
Tess leaves that afternoon to go dig up some intel to make sure the path tonight will be clear. He’d go with her normally, but they can’t haul a kid around, especially not one that’s very much not theirs. He’d tried to argue that he should go while she stayed, and she’d given him a look.
“What?” She’d asked, hands on her hips. “You one of those men who thinks women should always get stuck with kids?”
He’s not entirely sure how she talked him into a trap, but she had.
So now he’s stuck babysitting.
The kid entertained herself for a while being nosy, and he’d confiscated two hunting knives and a box of bullets before he’d gone on a brief baby-proofing spree, moving weapons up beyond tiny hands. Her own knife had been more of a fight, so he’d sacrificed one of his carefully rationed zip ties to keep it shut while he took care of anything else she could get her hands on. She’d sat on the couch and pouted about it, de-commissioned knife in hand, but she hadn’t tried to stop him.
Through sheer lack of anything else, he’d finally just set out some pots and pans for her, operating on some half-remembered thing Sarah had enjoyed at about her age. The kid hadn’t known what to do at first, just watching him like he’d lost his mind, but filling up a stockpot they’ve never even touched with water and then using a ladle to move it to a smaller pot had made her perk up with interest. When he’d handed it over, she’d taken it with a surprisingly polite thank you and settled down to whatever make-believe she’s come up with.
In the living room, he half-observes her, but set to her task, she seems pretty content, so he focuses on some maps of a new route in and out of the city. He has his doubts about the veracity of it, so he’s busy cross-referencing it with their maps when there’s suddenly a bowl of water in the way. He looks up to find Ellie in an apron she found he doesn’t even know where, the strings trailing behind her untied. She’s beaming as she sets the bowl down in front of him.
“It’s soup!” She says proudly.
He looks down to the bowl of what’s very definitely water with a wine stopper and a couple corks in it. More mystery finds of hers, and he’s almost a little impressed at her finding abilities for things he hasn’t seen in years of living in this apartment.
Mostly he’s just annoyed at the damp patches on his maps.
“Great,” he tells her, picking it up and handing it back, picking up his papers with his other hand and shaking them out. “Go eat your soup in the kitchen.” Very old habit makes him want to tell her not to put any of it in her mouth, but she’s a QZ kid. She’s probably done worse, and she’s not his problem to keep from getting sick. “Don’t drink it, though. It’s not safe.” Goddamn it.
“It’s your soup!” She says insistently, pushing it back into his hand. “It’s good!”
“Sure, thanks,” he says. When she ignores him extending the bowl back and primly makes her way back into the kitchen, tripping over her apron in the process, he rolls his eyes and sets it on the floor.
Kids.
*
He’s been brought two more bowls of “soup” and a pot of what he’s told is cake before she gets impatient with his lack of interest in her creations.
“I’m not eating it,” he says, leaning his head back away from the spoon being jabbed at his mouth. “Ellie,” he says, the first time he’s used her name. “Knock it off.”
“Yum!” She insists, hopping with frustration and jabbing with more force.
“Jesus,” he groans, finally taking the spoon to avoid getting his goddamn teeth knocked out. He flicks the little bit of water left in it to the side and takes an exaggerated sip.
Her smile is beatific.
“Good soup,” he says, handing the spoon back.
Her smile turns into a scowl as she rolls her eyes.
“That’s potatoes,” she says, like he’s absolutely the most stupid person she’s ever had the misfortune to play restaurant with.
He graciously doesn’t comment as she stomps back to work.
Evening cannot come soon enough.
*
He’s not totally sure how he’s been bullied into sitting on the kitchen floor when Tess gets back, but he returns her amused look resentfully as she hangs her keys up while he accepts another bowl of what’s either imaginary applesauce or chicken. He’s lost track, and he’s pretty sure the kid has, too.
“You having fun?” Tess asks dryly, and Ellie nods before he even has a chance to respond.
“This is Ellie’s resser-rester-” She stops, little face screwing up in concentration.
“Restaurant?” He provides without meaning to, and she smiles, waving her spatula at him.
“Yeah! That! This is Ellie’s that!”
“Sounds good,” Tess says, kicking at his knee teasingly as she sits down until he takes a swipe at her. “What’s your specialty?”
She gets a blank look from the kitchen terrorist holding him hostage.
“What are you serving?” Tess asks instead, and Ellie’s face lights up with understanding.
“Soup! It’s good soup.”
“Well,” Tess says, settling with her back to a cabinet. “One soup, then, please.”
Ellie sighs mournfully.
“No more soup,” she says apologetically, shaking her head and putting her hands on her hips in a gesture that’s clearly imitation.
“Oh?”
“Mhm,” she says with a solemn nod. “Joel ate it all.”
He rolls his eyes skyward and begs for four more hours of patience.
*
She gets cranky about an hour after Tess returns, and it’s little wonder. She’s still young enough that it’s possible she’s still used to naps, and she had a late night being a pest. She held it in respectably long for a kid who has to be tired, but the screaming tantrum she pitches when Tess goes to pick a couple of the plates up off of the floor clearly says she’s a kid who absolutely needs a timeout to get some sleep.
“Ow!” He says when she slaps at him with her spatula before he pulls it out of her hand. “Enough restaurant. Time for a nap.”
“No!” She protests. He catches himself before he grabs her by her arm as she reaches to get her weapon back. She’s only being annoying because she’s tired, after all. There’s no reason to terrify her again.
“You can take a nap now or in five minutes,” he says, and her whining cuts off as she focuses up, clearly thrown a little. “And we can turn the radio on,” he says as an extra incentive. He sees her gaze flick to the radio, now moved well out of her reach. Her eyes narrow a little in thought. “But only if you take a nap now. If you take a nap in five minutes, no radio.”
He can practically see the wheels turning in her head.
“Can I turn it on?” She asks, and it’s almost funny how much she sounds like Tess in negotiation mode.
“If you help clean up the kitchen, yeah.”
Another moment of thought, and then she nods and gets to work.
Groaning a little as he rises on half-asleep legs, he sees Tess giving him a look he’s never seen before.
“What?” He asks, a little self-conscious. He’s rusty on naptime negotiations, but he doesn’t think he did that badly. It worked, after all.
Tess shakes her head like she’s clearing it.
“Nothing,” she says, before she reaches to pick up a pot too heavy for Ellie to manage.
*
“I’m not sleepy,” she tells him as he lifts her high enough to turn the radio on.
“Uh huh,” he says, wincing when it comes on at full volume. “Turn it-no, other way-yeah, good job.”
She kicks her feet with delight even though it’s just static, and he has to shift her to his hip when she wiggles so much at turning the knob to look for a station that it’s all he can do not to drop her. There aren’t many stations anymore, but FEDRA likes to pretend like they’re anything like a functioning society, so there’s a couple frequencies of music interspersed with propaganda.
“Can I help?” He asks to avoid another tantrum when she can’t quite get the knob right for the classical station he usually avoids. He has no fucking clue what official has this as a pet project, but even when the other stations fail, this one always has something boring and nap-inducing playing.
She considers the question for a moment before she nods, watching intently as he turns the knob by tiny increments until Beethoven doesn’t sound so crackly.
“I’m not funking sleepy,” she tells him again as he carries her into their room. He and Tess need to review the maps, and it’s easier to make the room dark anyway compared to the living room. He’s also hoping the glee of being in forbidden territory will help her settle down with less argument. From the spark of pleasure he sees cross her face when he sets her down on the mattress, he was correct.
“Just close your eyes for a little,” he tells her, poking her head with one finger to tip her backwards.
“I’m not,” a badly repressed yawn here, “sleepy,” she maintains.
“Mhm,” he says. After a moment of consideration, he lays down beside her. If she’s going to try and pull a runner, might as well stop her before she gets off the bed. “Well, I am. Rest your eyes with me.”
“My eyes aren’t sleepy,” she protests, and he pretends not to notice when she wiggles over just enough to be touching slightly. “I’m none sleepy,” she says, the last word stretched by another yawn she does an even worse job of hiding.
He doesn’t comment, instead humming lightly along to the song. He doesn’t remember all of it, but it’s not like the kid knows enough to call him on it.
“Not sleepy,” she says, voice almost a murmur.
She’s out cold about five minutes later, and he rises with a slight smile as he pulls the blanket up over her.
Apparently even post-apocalypse 4 year olds are predictable as fuck.
*
He doesn’t even fully register the thunderstorm that starts up an hour later other than to be displeased at the knowledge that it lasting means they’re going to get fucking soaked and he’ll have damp boots for a week. The shitty construction of their building means it feels like it’s rattling the support beams, but he’d done his own investigation before they moved in, so he knows it’s solid enough work.
Still, even he jumps when one clap of thunder is loud enough to audibly rattle the windows.
The sound is followed immediately by a sharp little scream that has him up at once, Tess at his heels, the cry putting them both immediately on high alert. Rationally, there’s nothing dangerous in the apartment, but there’s a certain quality to a child’s scream that makes all common sense disappear.
The speed with which they burst into the room makes the kid scream again, but a flash of lightning shows that she’s fine, curled into a little ball on the bed, shaking but in one piece, the light reflecting on tear tracks on her face.
He doesn’t even think before he moves. There’s no thought to it, no planning. There’s a kid shaking and crying, and even without him knowing why, it strikes at something gut deep, pushing him into movement at once. He kneels on the bed and pulls her up, and it’s the matter of a brief, frozen moment before she uncurls and latches onto him like a limpet, legs wrapping around his waist and arms almost chokingly tight around his neck, one fist accidentally yanking his hair when she curls it around his shirt collar.
Another rumble of thunder, and she whimpers, tucking her head down so fast she clips him on the jaw with her forehead. He winces but doesn’t let go, as if she’d even let him.
“Loud,” she whimpers.
“It’s just a storm,” Tess says, kneeling on the bed beside him.
“It hurts my ears,” she says, and he feels her fingernails scratch him when she flinches at another roll of thunder.
He thinks of the thick walls of the orphanage, solid cinder block and concrete, meant to be a protective measure against bombing like most FEDRA buildings. It’s not surprising that a kid who grew up in such a building wouldn’t have heard a storm like this. Even Sarah had been frightened when she was little. She’d hated it, been scared of the noise and the lightning. The only thing that had made her calm down was-
“It’s just angels playing drums,” he says.
She pulls back enough to frown.
“What?”
She jumps at more thunder and tugs his shirt collar to the side by fisting her hand in his shirt at his shoulder, but her bewilderment has overcome her terror for the moment. He pushes her hair back out of her face where it’s stuck to her skin with her tears. It’s almost fully out of her ponytail, and he almost idly uses one hand to gather it back before he makes himself stop. That’s not his job.
“It’s angels playing drums,” he says again. “That’s all. Listen.” She does, little face very serious. She flinches at the thunder again, but she doesn’t whimper.
Progress.
“They get bored up there,” he tells her. “They like to make music sometimes.”
She wrinkles her little nose.
“It’s bad music,” she says dubiously.
Despite himself, he snorts.
“That’s why they gotta practice,” he says, looking to Tess when she slips the kid’s hair tie loose and gathers it back a little more neatly.
“That’s why it’s raining,” Tess says. “It makes God cry because they suck.”
He huffs a laugh before he makes himself commit to the expansion on his lie.
“He’ll make ‘em stop soon,” he tells her.
He barely jerks his head back in time to avoid a headbutt to the chin when a bed-rattling shake moves through the building. Apparently, angels or not, she’s still not so keen on the noise. She curls up into a little ball, and he finds himself readjusting her without thought, his body moving from memory and not active direction.
He breathes through the unwanted swell of rightness that flows through him at the warm weight of a kid in his arms. This isn’t his life. She’s not his. He’s not hers. She’s a scared kid and he’s an adult who happens to be nearby. That’s all.
Still, he guides her head down to his shoulder and presses a hand to her other ear to muffle the noise. She relaxes a little, tensing slightly at more thunder but clearly much calmer without the full volume. She sighs in a motion that moves her whole body, and he feels her nuzzle her cheek against him.
He resists the urge to toss her off of him.
“Don’t think it’ll be stopping soon,” Tess says, scratching gently at Ellie’s back in a way that makes her go a little looser. He remembers that, remembers his mom doing it to him and Tommy. It’s something he hasn’t thought about in years.
Surprising, how many of those memories are suddenly getting dragged up against his will.
He scowls at the window, like the storm is doing this on purpose.
There’s no way they can take the kid out in this, not if even being inside during it scares her. To say nothing of the danger of the storm itself, her making noise or freezing when they’re outside could mean them getting caught. A FEDRA guard won’t care why they’re out with a kid. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.
And there’s no guarantee they’ll be careful with how they aim.
“One more night,” he says severely, even though he keeps the hand he has against her head gentle as he continues muffling the storm.
“Whatever you say, Tex,” Tess says, rising to shut the curtain to at least block out some of the lightning. “You’re the idea guy here.”
It’s only needing both of his hands that keeps him from flipping her off.
*
He nearly rolls his eyes when he realizes the kid has fallen asleep on him.
He can feel her back move beneath his hand in steady inhales and exhales, her breath a warm puff against his neck. Her hands have gotten looser in her sleep, but they’re still balled in fists in his shirt, though her legs have slackened until he was able to readjust her to lay a little more comfortably. Tess has already abandoned him to get something together to eat for supper, so he’s left playing furniture.
He’s very steadfastly telling himself he hates it.
She makes a soft noise in her sleep and shifts, and he holds his breath as she settles, rubbing her face against him until she rests with her forehead against his neck, letting out a soft, content sigh.
For a kid who felt like carrying around a statue 24 hours ago, apparently she’s gotten used to being touchy pretty fucking easily.
He can feel memories pulling at him, teasing him with nights of holding Sarah, fussy for one reason or another, or sweet and clingy. He remembers the feel of little curls tickling him, remembers another little body in his arms. There was a period of about four months when she was three that she wouldn’t sleep at all unless he held her, and he’d spent those months learning how to live with one hand for the sake of not putting her down. Julia and Tommy had both teased him about being subject to the whims of a little princess, and he’d tolerated it, not admitting to enjoying being a favorite. He’d regretted it, almost, when she’d finally gotten out of that stage.
He regrets it even more now, how many nights he wasted not holding her, not soaking up every last possible memory he could have.
The kid’s arms moving down to wrap around his chest, the same way Sarah always clung to him, is his final straw, and he stands up so fast that he startles her awake. He all but tosses her down, and her eyes go wide and scared as he stands over her.
“I’m sorry,” she says at once, placating and desperate at once, reacting to whatever it is she reads on his face and in his body language. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“Stop,” he tells her, and her mouth shuts with an audible snap. “I’m not-” He looks away, heaves out a frustrated breath. “I’m not mad at you,” he says, forcing his tone even. “You didn’t-you’re fine.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, tucking herself up in a little ball against the pillows.
And making him feel about two inches tall in the process.
He drops back onto the bed, and he doesn’t know if she jumps or if he just bounces her doing it. She doesn’t flee, though, and after hesitating just a moment, he reaches out and rests a hand on top of her head gently.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared,” she says immediately, the reflexive move of a kid used to hiding weaknesses.
“Well,” he says, allowing it. “I’m still sorry.”
Slowly, she uncurls from her ball, and he doesn’t react as she scoots closer, until she’s pressed to his side.
She doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t either.
But when Tess says food’s ready, she accepts the hand he offers her to slide off the bed.
*
He wakes late that night to rustling in their room and is about half a second from grabbing his gun when the silhouette registers.
“Couch,” he orders her, when his eyes have adjusted well enough to see her in the dim light.
Looking right at him, she slowly creeps one hand farther up the mattress. When he doesn’t actually move to stop her, she follows it with another couple inches closer.
“You sleep on the couch,” he tells her.
Another hand forward.
He rolls his eyes and drops his head back to his pillow. He reaches overhead and grabs another squished by the headboard, tossing it down and hearing a soft “oof” as it connects and knocks her back a bit.
“Bottom of the bed,” he tells her, not looking. “Crawl up any higher, and I’m tossing you out a window.”
The only response is the sensation of a small body curling up by his legs.