#challenge fic

Tsuna and Kyoko's engagement party had only just begun. The ballroom at the Vongola's Japanese headquarters was tastefully decorated for the event. Evening sunshine beamed through the colossal windows looking out on to the thriving garden. Friends and family (and Family) of the couple drifted in and out from all directions, and all of them wore formal garb, the men, suits; the women, colorful gowns. Standing awkwardly by the drink table, you felt entirely out of place.

"What on earth are you wearing?"

The question asked in the familiar deep voice of your older brother, Kyoya Hibari, did not soothe your nerves. You shifted and found yourself unable to meet his gray eyes. Avoiding his face would only upset him, but you simply couldn't manage to lift your gaze. At least you kept your own voice steady when you answered:

"It's a ball gown."

"Is there a reason you've chosen to look so ridiculous?"

Pins and needles sharper than Roll's shot up your arms. Trust Kyoya to speak your fear into existence the moment he saw you. Just looking at yourself in the mirror before coming downstairs, you knew—well, you knew you didn't look as natural as the likes of Kyoko and Haru and Bianchi looked in their dresses. When your typical black-tie attire consisted of a literal black tie, suit, pants, and dress shirt in your Flame color, of course you stood out like a sore thumb wearing a gown.

"I just thought it would be nice to dress up for the party." You crushed the hem of your skirt in one fist.

"And if something should happen to necessitate moving quickly and precisely?" he asked.

"Kyoya," you groaned. "No one is going to mount an attack on the Tsuna's engagement party, all right? No one!"

"You're certain of that, are you? Hn. Well, if you want to risk getting blood all over your pretty clothes..."

"As if you aren't the goriest fighter here," you muttered, rather than admit he'd made you feel dumber than ever. You'd spent a decent amount of money on this outfit, and some of tonight's guests were sure to misbehave, even if their actions didn't amount to bloodshed. "No one is going to start a fight tonight," you said more firmly, "Hayato would kill them if they so much as thought about it."

"Do you think he'd mind killing Lambo now as opposed to later?" came a new voice to your conversation.

You looked around to spot your good friend I-Pin sauntering up to you and your brother, resplendent in an electric blue and yellow qipao. She offered a respectful bow to Kyoya, who answered with a slight inclining of his head, before she turned to give you a once-over.

"You look great, [Name]!" she said.

Awkwardly, you fingered the neckline of your gown. "I take your comment to mean you and Lambo are currently off."

I-Pin hummed noncommittally. Her surreptitious glance at Kyoya was answer enough. You spied Lambo across the hall, surrounded by the usual hoard of squealing fans, but even from this distance you could see his eyes darting toward I-Pin's back every few seconds. So she hadn't just come over to compliment your appearance, then; this was a strategic position on her part. Whether he'd willingly admit it or not, Kyoya had a soft spot for her—and not an ounce of sympathy for Lambo.

"Anyway," I-Pin said with a wave of her hand, "don't listen to Mr. Hibari. If Lambo tries anything disruptive tonight, I'll kill him myself. You just focus on wooing you-know-who."

You felt rather than saw Kyoya stiffen beside you.

"I-Pin," you hissed between clenched teeth.

She winced. "Sorry. Was that a secret?"

"So that's why you decided to wear something like that," he said.

"Kyoya—" you began, but he cut you off.

"I forbade you from speaking to him, did I not?"

Only your brother could make his fury plain with such a cold, emotionless voice. But he had trained you well. You did not quail at his tone. Instead, you looked him straight in the eye and said:

"I can speak with him if I want to speak with him."

"Oh? And how do you plan to defy me when you can't even reach your weapon right now?"

Poor I-Pin could only watch as you and Kyoya sized each other up. Her dark eyes were huge in her face. Probably she knew the same thing that you did: You couldn't take him. Kyoya wasn't called the strongest Vongola Guardian for no reason. But the minute you let on that you knew that would be the minute he won.

"Tsuna says we should be welcoming. If he doesn't care if I talk to him, why should you?" you asked.

"She's right, Mr. Hibari. Mr. Sawada wants—"

Kyoya gave I-Pin a look that clearly told her to stay out of his family disputes. Her mouth snapped shut, and she shot you an obvious nonverbal apology. Well, it wasn't her fault your brother was so good at holding grudges.

"Tsuna can 'welcome' whoever he wants," he said. "But you—

"What happened between you and Mukuro happened ten years ago, and it has nothing to do with me!"

"Kufufu. Speak of the devil, and he will appear."

And there, through a sudden dense mist that surrounded the refreshment table, materialized a tall figure in shadow. The fog rolled away to reveal a familiar man with long blue hair. I-Pin gasped. Mukuro didn't spare her a second glance. As usual, he had eyes only for Kyoya, and Kyoya for him.

"Don't tell me I'm the culprit of another little Hibari family spat. Poor [Name]," Mukuro purred, pulling you against his side. "Is the big, bad Cloud Guardian bullying you again?"

"Let her go," Hibari said in a tone that would have struck terror into the heart of anyone else.

Mukuro just slid his gloved fingers into your painstakingly-crafted hair. "If she wanted me to let her go, she could easily make me herself. Isn't that right, dear little [Name]?"

All you could do was grit your teeth and tug futilely against his grip. It was always like this when anyone forced Mukuro and Kyoya into the same room together. Try as you might to find Takeshi in the crowd to signal for aid, you couldn't find him. Anyone else getting involved in this exchange would only make things worse.

"Oh, Mr. Hibari, I really don't think taking our your tonfa is a good idea!" I-Pin said.

Or perhaps things would get worse without Hayato or Ryohei's help.

"Do we really have to do this?" you raised your voice so that Kyoya could hear.

Of course, he said nothing. Mukuro simply laughed again. The sound raised the hairs on the back of your neck at such close quarters.

"What do you mean? All I'm doing is greeting a dear friend of mine."

"We are not friends."

"[Name], you wound me. Did you not just say that what lies between your brother and myself has nothing at all to do with you?"

"You're not who I'm concerned about."

"Ahhh. So it's still my beloved disciple that holds your—"

Only because you'd seen them fight so many times over the course of your life were able to shift in time to avoid Kyoya's first strike with his tonfa. Mukuro let go of you before the metal could touch him. The sudden disappearance of his iron grip sent you tumbling to the hard ground.

"[Name], are you okay?" I-Pin asked as you struggled to right yourself around your gown. All you seemed capable of was getting yourself more tangled.

"Kyoya might have been right about the dress," you answered.

"But he's the one that started it!"

At least you'd dodged the opening assault. No doubt your brother would have blamed you for getting in the way of his never-ending battle with Mukuro, skirts or no skirts. But now you lay forgotten—literally—in a heap while those two duked it out again. Each face already glistened with lines of blood, and, much to your horror, the whole debacle had started to draw attention.

"Oi! What do you bastards think you're doing?!"

"Shit," you said as you spotted Hayato rushing in the direction of the fracas. The spaces between each of his fingers held sticks of dynamite. You had to act fast, or Tsuna's entire party would have to be held in the ruins of his recently-built mansion. "Would you two knock it off?!"

If either Mukuro or Kyoya heard you, neither showed it. Only the ubiquitous sound of tonfa clanging against pitchfork replied. Hayato sped nearer all the while. The dynamite drew closer and closer to the lit cigarette clenched between his teeth. Though I-Pin continued to grasp your shoulder as she watched the chaos unfold around her, you managed to shake her off. With a tremendous amount of effort, you heaved yourself up to your feet.

"Stop!"

Although he hadn't mentioned it, your brother probably wouldn't have approved of your heels either. You'd agree with that in retrospect as well. The sudden momentum combined with your clumsy gait sent you stumbling right into the middle of the fight.

"Not at this party, you assholes!"

And just in time for Hayato to throw his own weapon into the ring. The dynamite soared at you as though in slow motion. You could not dodge. You could not swipe it away. You could only watch, aghast, as the explosive sailed right up to you before it detonated with an earsplitting boom.

Crash!

A loud ringing filled your ears. Above you hanged jittering crystals, clouds of smoke, and wisps of purple and indigo flames. You stared at this kaleidoscope in a daze. Then, all at once, sensation slammed back into you: laughter, pain, cold, wet.

"Oh, children! Couldn't you have waited for the real party to arrive before you got to the fun part of the evening?" Footsteps walking through shards of glass heralded the arrival of yet more of an audience to your mortification. "Got into the liquor a little early tonight, hmm, [Name]?"

You recognized the barely stifled laughter before your brain caught up with your eyes to recognize the bright red and lime green blurring across your vision: Lussuria. The Varia had at last arrived.

A chill seeped into your bones—or maybe that was just the wine soaking through your ruined dress. Unwilling to sit there a moment longer, you gingerly peeled yourself off the collapsed table littered with the remains of the pyramid of glasses. Whether I-Pin's gasp was in reaction to the stains on your wardrobe or the cuts you could feel opening up across your shoulders and arms, you couldn't say. You didn't have the mental capacity to ask, for directly next to the Varia's Sun Guardian—who was practically quivering with glee at your predicament—stood the one person you'd been hoping to impress that evening.

Fran's face betrayed nothing of what he felt upon finding you in such a state. Why would it? It never did. Just behind him, Mukuro's red eye danced with amusement. Your brother narrowed his own eyes at the back of Fran's head—covered, as always, by some ludicrous cap.

Fran made eye contact with you. He said nothing. You said nothing.

"Oh, [Name]."

You felt I-pin lightly grasp your shoulder again, but you shook it off once more.

"I need to go change," you mumbled.

Without waiting for anyone to try to stop you, you turned and mechanically marched from the ballroom. Only a few people called out, but you ignored them. It took every ounce of self-control Kyoya had drilled into you to remain stoic with so many eyes watching your progress. One slipup, one crack in your façade, would only make an already humiliating situation worse.

Step by agonizing step, you made it to the hallway, to the grand stairs, to the room assigned to you as a guest visiting for the party. You let out a tremulous breath as you pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind you with a quiet click.

The bed in front of you looked so welcoming. You could pull of this godawful gown, wash off your makeup, and throw yourself into the lush pillows for a good cry. Certainly nothing else sounded more appealing just then.

But you could not. Someone would come searching for you when you didn't return. The last thing you needed was for either Mukuro or Kyoya to catch you crying over spilled wine, and all that after spilling wine all over yourself in front of a cute boy you rarely got to see.

Then you spotted your reflection in the mirror. This alone cracked your thin veil of composure. Dark wine colored huge patches of your dress. Your impact with the table had loosed your hair from its meticulous styling. Your eyes, despite your best efforts, were red and damp.

A sob burned the inside of your chest, but you refused to let it out. You whipped around and marched to the room's adjoining balcony. If you could not fling yourself into bed and cry, then you could stand outside and watch the last of the sunset over the garden. Clutching your upper arms so hard that your fingernails sent little stabs of pain up them kept you grounded enough to stay calm where someone might spot you.

Why did Kyoya have to be this way? You were a dutiful younger sister, enduring all the rigorous training and lectures on tradition he demanded throughout your life. Though you had not been granted the position of Vongola Guardian, you know that Tsuna (and, more importantly, Reborn) respected your strength and abilities. Not once in all these years had you ceased to do whatever you could to serve your family—both blood and figurative. And then the one night you wanted to be someone more than Kyoya Hibari's little sister...

You sucked in your lower lip where it had started to pout. One of your fists pressed into the skin just beneath an eye as a single tear threaten to leak out. Why should you cry? The spiteful part of you wanted to accuse Kyoya of sending you toppling into the drinks on purpose. He hated the thought of you cozying up to anyone related to his sworn enemy, however tangentially. But if you kept thinking that way, you'd never return to the party.

"It would serve him right," you muttered to no one.

But it wouldn't serve Tsuna and Kyoko right. You cared about them. They both deserved to have a blissful engagement celebration without the typical Vongola Family nonsense ruining things as usual. Knowing Kyoko, she wouldn't let the festivities begin until you came back anyway. And yet you couldn't quite bring yourself to make a move to head downstairs. However much you might try to deny it, you did feel fear the same as anyone else.

Still, your fear of embarrassing yourself in front of so many important people in your life could not be allowed to ruin everyone else's evening.

Sighing, you turned back toward the door to your quarters. If you could stomach wrangling Lambo without Futa to help, you could stomach being laughed at for a few hours.

"Why does it take women so long to make themselves look exactly the same?"

That voice drifting up to you froze you to the spot. Your higher brain functions seemed to cease. Did you want to handle this? After a moment or two of mute dithering, you moved back to where you'd been standing to peek hesitantly over the balcony railing. There stood Fran, flat-faced as always.

"Or do you just have identical dresses that look stained?" he asked.

"It's the same dress!" you snapped when your brain finally caught up with your eyes.

"Oh. I wasn't aware that looking that like a drunk dalmatian was so fashionable. I'll have to inform Captain Lussuria."

"Did you only come out here to irritate me?"

"Mah. Not only to irritate you. Your crying jag was getting lengthy."

"I wasn't crying!"

"I suppose having smeared mascara down your cheeks is fashionable now as well."

You inhaled sharply as you lifted a hand to your face. The skin there felt damp. No need to look in the mirror inside to confirm that Fran wasn't making things up.

"I wasn't crying the entire time," you said. "Tell everyone I'll be there soon. I just need to clean myself up a bit, and—"

"Don't bother."

"Huh?"

"Don't bother cleaning up."

"Fran, wine stains and smeared makeup really aren't in style. I'm not going back downstairs looking like this."

"Why even bother going back?"

Your fingers tightened around the railing in front of you. Sometimes you really had to wonder who thought the cosmic joke of you falling for this boy in particular would actually be funny.

"I can't just ditch, Fran. This party is a big deal. Everyone will notice if I don't show up."

"You mean like they noticed when you fell backwards into the drinks?"

"I didn't—"

But you bit your lip hard enough to make it bleed in your rush to clamp your mouth over the end of your sentence. Dutiful sisters did not blame others for their own failures, and neither did full-fledged members of the Vongola Family. You and you alone were ultimately responsible for the whole fiasco. After all, you should have been able to predict that Kyoya and Mukuro would start fighting the minute they laid eyes on one another.

"You do realize they're just going to do that twenty-six more times before the night is over," Fran said, as though he could read your mind—not exactly a comforting thought, all things considered.

"Maybe I should change into pants this time," you conceded.

"You do that. I'm leaving."

And indeed he turned around to do just that. Your heart nearly popped out of your chest.

"W-wait!"

"Why?"

You scrambled for an answer that wouldn't leave you all alone with a sympathetic I-Pin for the duration of the party. "Won't your boss be mad?"

"My boss is always mad," Fran said. "So is Captain Squalo. And Captain Levi. And—"

"Okay. Okay. I get it. Everyone in the Varia needs anger management classes. Duly noted."

"Your brother's already plenty mad, too."

True. Your choice of outfit had already incited Kyoya enough to ensure a thorough dressing down later on, even disregarding your spectacular trip into the wine. Now he'd only be more convinced than ever he had been right, that you had no business dressing up like that even for parties such as this one. And while your brother would never physically strike you in order to punish you, his icy demeanor would likely be enough to make everyone around you miserable for the rest of the night.

So why bother going back? You could always beg Tsuna and Kyoko for forgiveness in the morning. Kyoya would be infuriated regardless of your absence. At least Tsuna had been on the receiving end of Kyoya's tonfa often enough that he would likely be sympathetic to your plight.

"Okay." Your entire body slumped over the railing as you surrendered. Undoubtedly you would regret your choice the next day, but for now, you only felt relieved.

Fran hardly reacted. "Let's get going."

"Hey! I still need to change!"

He looked over his shoulder just far enough to allow you to hear his response: "You can if you want. I'm not hanging around here long enough to get dragged back to that sad excuse for a party."

Fran did not stop. If you really wanted to join him, you needed to move fast. Your body seemed to move of its own accord upon seeing this. Down you swung from the balcony to land neatly on your feet in the shadowed grass. Although the dark stains on your gown still showed through, at least in the darkness of dusk they were more difficult to see. And while you paused to check this, Fran moved ever on ahead. You rushed after him and, in a fit of bravery, grabbed his hand.

He looked at where your fingers interlaced, but said nothing.

This made you feel braver still. You squeezed his palm and asked, "Where are we going?"

He shrugged. "There's not much to do around here anyway."

You opened your mouth to protest this impugning of Namimori's honor when a flash of light and movement in the corner of your eye brought you up short. Of course, your luck would lead you right by one of the ballroom's enormous windows. Standing there and looking straight at you were Tsuna and Kyoko. Your blood ran cold. What would they think of you sneaking off with Fran of all people? The Vongola Family's alliance with the Varia was tenuous at best to begin with! If you did something to break the fragile peace with Xanxus, you shuddered to think what sort of training you'd endure at Reborn's hands in retaliation.

Tsuna smiled, the expression so fleeting you thought you imagined it as he turned to walk away. Kyoko made sure to catch your eye, then she winked and held a single finger up to her lips before she followed her fiancé into the waiting crowd.

You couldn't help gaping after them. It couldn't really be that easy, could it?

A tug on your arm drew you back to your immediate surroundings. You couldn't tell by his face if Fran had spotted the happy couple giving you their blessing. He probably wouldn't care if they had. But when he saw you looking at him again, he said:

"Come on. Show me what's so great about this town. We can deal with your brother and my master some other time."

“Getting kind of low on the hay,” you told the horse as you groped for the feeding trough through the red sunlight flooding Callus Two’s window. He (or so Ellie insisted; you weren’t about to check yourself) stamped one hoof when you found it, nearing only to nicker in obvious disappointment at the little amount of hay inside.

“Sorry,” you said with a careless shrug. “It’s hard all around.”

“I don’t remember giving you permission to give my horse attitude.”

Twisting around, you saw Ellie standing pale in the entrance of the stable. Her glassy eyes flashed dimly in the semi-darkness, her lips set in what you could only assume was a shitty attempt at a scowl. How she intended to frighten anyone when she still looked as limp and moist as a fucking cooked noodle was beyond you. You could have tackled her to the ground—if the damn horse hadn’t got in the way. As soon as Callus Two spotted her, he was pressing you against the rough, splintery wall to get at Ellie.

“That’s right. You know who loves you,” she crooned as she patted his neck with one hand and held a second up to his fucking gross horse lips. A familiar crunch filled the air. So that was why the damn horse was so excited to see her.

“The fuck are you doing out of bed?” you asked.

If Ellie was well enough to bring the thing treats, she was well enough to feed and water and clean it and scoop its fucking poop. Wielding a shovel with one arm was no easy task—though you would admit to yourself (and yourself only) that the work had done wonders for your muscles. That did nothing to change the fact that you still spilled the fucking manure all over your shoes more often than not, though, which meant you felt no inclination to be charitable.

“Is she taking good care of you?” Ellie asked the horse. “Just tell me if she’s not. I’ll have her fired so fast her fucking head’ll spin.”

You were in no mood listen to the little shit poke fun at you. Filthy, exhausted, and hungry, you wanted nothing more than to choke down whatever the fuck the cafeteria had leftover this late and crawl into bed. Too bad for you that Ellie was somehow your personal responsibility until Joel came back from wherever the hell he’d run off to. The brat had come down with a bout of food poisoning due to fucking marshmallows of all things. Tommy couldn’t have thought of a better punishment for you skipping out on night-watch duty if he’d fucking tried, not that Joel had allowed it easily or all that willingly.

“Get back to the goddamn infirmary,” you snapped, “and quit wasting the apples on your fucking mule.”

Ellie shot you a look of what might have been amusement—the same look she’d shot you since you were assigned to be her personal slave. She might not have taken Joel ditching her very damn well, but you remaining behind seemed to go a long way in cheering her up. You supposed there must have been something funny about watching you struggle to open fucking doors with your only damn hand clutching a glass of water; still, it didn’t exactly endear Ellie to you any further than she’d already wormed her way into your shithole of a life.

“Why should I?” Ellie wanted to know.

Callus Two had finished his fruit and moved onto mouthing his slime into Ellie’s hair. The fucking horse seemed more interested in breaking your toes than grooming you, but you shuddered all the same. Horse spit was not something you wanted to have stuck in your hair until wash day. Unfortunately, Ellie saw and her weak smile only grew at your obvious discomfort.

“Just go,” you said. Maybe if you started shoveling, she’d leave you the hell alone—not that that ever worked. “I don’t want yelled at for letting you walk around again.”

“She’s with me.” Maria stepped inside the stall, her eyes narrowed at you. Ellie practically beamed.

“So she’s well enough to be out and about?” you asked coolly. Maria’s presence was not one you knew well enough to think snarling would be tolerated. Though you sensed a kindred spirit in her commands and scowls, it was carefully buried underneath several layers of strained patience.

“I haven’t thrown up in twenty-four hours,” Ellie said with a brightness that did not match her syrupy movements.

“I’ve seen more of your fucking insides than I ever wanted in the past week and a half, and one day means your good to go?”

“She’s fine.” Ellie turning to speak softly to her horse again force Maria to answer your question.

You noticed that though she met your eyes, Maria’s expression didn’t seem as fiercely determined as usual. Ellie still looked pretty damn white and sweaty. Food poisoning hadn’t been too bad in the distant past, but in this day and age where medicine was jealously guarded and hard to come by, all anyone could do was watch as Ellie tried and failed to keep down one grainy dinner roll after another. Tommy and Maria had spent as much time as they could spare in the infirmary with her. If they thought Ellie was well enough to move about, who were you to argue? Besides her fucking nurse, that was. At least this meant they were watching her. It would keep Ellie out of your hair for a few more days, thank fucking God.

“Fine.” Arguing with Ellie’s aunt wouldn’t do you any favors anyhow. “Just make sure I haven’t been abusing your pet and get out of here. I want to be done before it gets dark.”

Ellie looked over at Maria, who simply moved her head to frown at you. “It’ll take as long as it takes. This is your job until further notice. Failure to do so—”

“Means I don’t get to eat.”

You rolled your eyes. How many times did Tommy think you needed to hear this fucking lecture? A couple of days without food had been more than enough to get his damn point across. Several months with three regular meals a day, however meager, made it all the more difficult to go without. It spoiled you. As much as you hated knowing that, though, you just couldn’t bring yourself to not eat when there was food available. For all you knew, next week it wouldn’t be.

“Ellie,” Maria said, the frost in her voice so apparent you were surprised that you couldn’t see her breath, “go get your saddle.”

Normally, you got the feeling that Ellie liked watching you get told off. Hell, you assumed she fucking loved it. Today, she scuttled off eagerly enough. Callus Two tried to trot after her. Maria blocked the way, though, and looked entirely unperturbed by the hooves going up and down near her feet. It didn’t seem likely that looking busy would get rid of her any quicker than her annoying niece, but you did your best.

Maria cleared her throat.

“What?” you demanded.

“Listen.” Maria stepped closer, her expression not shifting from a frown once. You didn’t see why you should do as she said, but the idea of having a pistol shoved to your head was just as unappealing as it was any other day. “You let anything happen to her—”

“Me? I’m not the one letting Joel’s dying whatsit out on a joyride, th—”

“Quit interrupting me.”

When her palm pressed into the holster at her thigh, you fell into a silence that was sure to be as sullen as you intended it to be. There you’d been, minding your own fucking business, and now Tommy’s damn wife was in here acting like you’d dragged Ellie out of her sickbed yourself.

“We got a signal from Joel. She’s not going to sit still until she sees him. So she sees him, and you bring her right back here. Understand?”

“No, I don’t fucking understand,” you said, shoulders hunching up around your ears as though you were some sort of cornered cat. “Why the fuck does she need to go running after Joel when she’s sick as one of your dogs?”

Unlike everyone else in Jackson, Maria didn’t react at all to your temper. There was nothing there of Joel’s impatience or Tommy’s pained sympathy. It was like your words slid off of her. All Maria was concerned about was getting her way; how you went about it didn’t seem to matter. “We can’t get her well until she knows he didn’t ditch her. We need someone to get her there safely.”

“What about you?”

“I can’t leave right now. But before you go, I need you to understand one thing, very clearly.” Maria got so close to you that your skin crawled. Every fiber of your being screamed at you to retreat, to get the fuck away before she drove a bullet through your skull. Instead, you stood your ground, muscles tensed as her nose nearly touched yours. “You’re expendable. She’s not.”

Even with adrenaline racing through your system so fast that thinking was difficult, your lips curled at the suggestion that a fucking fifteen-year-old warranted more importance than you, the experienced adult. You’d been hunting since before Ellie had been a fucking thought in some guy’s dick. Of course, you’d lost your arm and become a useless sack of shit since then. You knew it every bit as well as Maria. Arguing wasn’t going to do you a lick of good. Still, your chin lifted in defiance.

“And how do you suggest I get her away from Joel if he’s not finished with whatever he’s doing out there?” you demanded.

“Drag her back. Tie her to the horse. I don’t care. I’m just saying, if she’s the only one that comes home on that horse, that’s fine. If she’s not on that horse at all, don’t bother coming back.”

That pissed you off. Everyone kept acting like you’d asked for this, like it was only out of the goodness of their hearts that they didn’t send you packing out the front door with no time to prepare—as though the collective of humanity even had any goodness any longer. Your knuckles went pale around the handle of your shovel; your lips parted with what you could only hope was a stinging retort, and then Ellie came back and the room was once again filled with excitedly prancing horse.

“What’s going on?” Ellie looked honest-to-God curious, as though the idea of Maria threatening you was the furthest fucking thing from her mind.

You’d seen Maria give Ellie her fair share of lectures (the only person in the damn settlement that bothered), but Ellie seemed to take these in stride as part of being family. Maria was no family of yours, but she seemed perfectly willing to chew you out for something you hadn’t even done yet. And in fact, Maria didn’t bother explaining. All she did was smile that same strained smile given over the discussion of Ellie’s health.

“Nothing,” Maria answered, and stepped away from the horse. “Saddle up. Hold tight to [Name] while she’s steering.”

What you could do to this order but snort? “Like I know how to drive a goddamn horse.”

“You don’t drive a horse,” Ellie said. “You ride.”

“Whatever.”

Maria didn’t look like she believed your lack of horsing experience. Why shouldn’t she have, though? Horses took up space and food—a lot more of both than human beings. Jackson was the only non-military settlement fucking stupid enough to keep them around. It was obvious why: Ellie’s damn sentimentality. Callus Two was like the damn dog she’d never got at that godforsaken school of hers. You, on the other hand, had grown up with real fucking transportation: cars and buses and airplanes, for fuck’s sake. By the fucking way? You only had one arm. How the fuck could you steer a horse one-handed?

After considering you through the growing night, Maria snorted herself, turned back to Ellie, and folded her arms across her chest. “Fine,” she said. “You steer. But if you start having trouble, you’re walking home.”

“We are not walking home,” Ellie muttered underneath her breath as Maria marched past her and out into the stable hall.

“You will if you have to,” Maria called back flatly.

That was the last you heard of her. Only the sound of her boots against the ground indicated that she had left. Ellie, meanwhile, was busy getting her saddle situated. It was clearly from before: old and scratched, with fraying straps and tarnished buckles. You supposed it must have done the job fine, though this didn’t matter much either way. Surely Ellie of all fucking people didn’t know how to ride bareback either.

“Are you coming or what?” Ellie’s voice snapped rudely into your musings about whether or not you actually should have learned to ride a horse when you’d had the damn chance. When you looked up, she was already atop Callus Two, reins in her hands and as close to a look of impatience as she could manage on her face.

“And if I’m not?” you asked in a voice of feigned curiosity.

“Can we not do your fucking drama queen bullshit right now?”

As if the dumb horse could sense Ellie’s agitation, he began to stamp again. “Shit,” was all you got out before you’d been backed into the wall again avoiding having your feet broken.

Ellie did not appear to notice or care. Her eyes were already glued to the tree line outside the window. “I need to see Joel. Either get on or fuck off—but remember it’ll be really fucking easy for me to catch up with Maria on horseback.”

“You little—”

“Not right now, okay?”

The look she threw you was almost pleading, or maybe that was just the sheen of sickness underneath her shell of contempt. Whatever it was, it wasn’t that that made you clumsily climb onto Callus Two’s trough and scramble onto his back. Last time you had been in this position was when Ellie had brought you to Jackson. She’d been a hell of a lot more accommodating then; now you were forced to struggle to get yourself adjusted all on your own. Ellie didn’t wait to make sure you were before she snapped the reins and the horse started off. The bouncing made it much more difficult for you to find your balance and all that came out of your mouth for the next few minutes was a stream of quite but vehement profanities.

“You done now?” Ellie asked once you had finally come to a stop behind her, legs pressed against hers and hand clutching at her hip as lightly as you dared. With the back of her red-brown head nearly pressed against your nose, you could smell the faint, cloying scent of illness clinging to her. This was the first you’d smelled of it, and it nearly made you sick yourself. Even what used to be Wyoming got warmish in the summer, meaning that you hadn’t had to cuddle the little shit to keep her warm at night. You wished you had been able to keep that distance now.

“Hey. Bitch. You settled?”

“I’m—fuck!” The damn horse obviously hated you, as he took the incline toward the forest with such a bound that you nearly flew off its back end again. “I’m settled, thanks.”

She glanced back once at you without pulling to a stop. Unlike you, Ellie knew the lay of the land surrounding Jackson. You could find your way to Joel’s swimming pond and that was fucking it. You were half-surprised that Maria hadn’t insisted on blindfolding you for this little venture with how little you were allowed outside these days. And for what? Who the fuck were you supposed to bring here? Who the hell did she think you liked enough to remain in contact with?

“What’s your deal?” Ellie asked.

“My deal?” you repeated incredulously. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Look, I didn’t fucking ask to be saddled with you for this. If I’d had my way, I’d be going to Joel alone.”

“Too bad for me that your family seems so damn keen to keep you around.”

The back of Ellie’s neck turned slightly pink. When she looked at you a second time, you could have sworn that the ends of her lips were twitching up. You must have been mistaken; Ellie never smiled at you or because of you. Then again, you weren’t sure if you were mistaken when Ellie spoke again, her voice uncharacteristically soft: “Yeah, well, you need to get out sometimes, too.” Must have been those marshmallows talking.

Once in the forest, Callus Two slowed considerably. At this rate, it would be past dark by the time you got Ellie home. Maria hadn’t outright said you had a time limit, but you wouldn’t have been surprised to find her standing at the gate waiting for you if you took too long.

You snorted into the top of Ellie’s head and looked away. “Your gesture of kindness might be more appreciated if your fucking aunt hadn’t twisted my arm about it.”

“She shouldn’t have to twist your arm.”

“Why the fuck should I listen to her?”

It was Ellie’s turn to sound incredulous. “Because she’s in charge.”

Why did you have to explain the workings of Ellie’s family business to her? That round of food poisoning must have fried the last few brain cells in the kid’s head. “Tommy is in charge,” you said slowly.

Ellie’s responding eye roll was so massive that her head moved along with it. “Maria is in charge. Jackson belongs to her family. She used to run it with her dad before he—”

“Died,” you finished for her. Everyone’s loved ones were either dead or fungal, and it wasn’t hard to tell if it was the latter. “If it’s Maria’s settlement, why does Tommy give me all my assignments?”

“Maria can’t stand you,” Ellie said bluntly. “Kind of a repeated pattern in your life, if you think about it.”

Already the images were there. They had been creeping closer and closer and close every night since that bungled attempt at watch duty. You could see a stunted, misshapen figure chained to a tree just out of the corner of your eye, hear the grunting slowly turning into the godforsaken clicking, taste the ghost of warm meat in the back of your throat.

Holy fucking shit, could one glimpse of a familiar face in the dark really turn you back into a quivering member of the non-fungus walking dead that quickly?

“Fuck!” Ellie hissed. “Let go.”

Too late, you realized your ragged fingernails had dug into her side. You hastily forced your fingers to straighten, balance be damned, but you didn’t bother offering Ellie an apology. You simply sucked in a high, quick breath.

“You stand me,” you answered smoothly a moment later. Ellie snorted again, forcing you to add almost insolently, “And Joel.”

You had, of course, intended to get a rise out of Ellie. Baiting her was about the only fucking thing that brought you joy in this life anymore—and no way in Hell were you speeding your way along to Hell. You figured you might as well enjoy the simple things in life, but Ellie had to go and ruin that too. She didn’t immediately snap at you; in fact, she hardly responded at all. For what felt like a whole damn minute, the only sound in your ears was the steady beat of horse hooves against the wet leaves on the ground. When Ellie finally did speak, her voice was so quiet that you could barely hear:

“Did he ask you to go with him?”

“Huh?”

“Did Joel ask you to go with him?”

A frown pressed wrinkles into your forehead. Was Ellie fucking delusional all of a sudden? “Did Joel as me to go where?”

“This isn’t that hard of a question!” Ellie snapped, twisting in her seat to glare at you. “Did Joel ask you to go along with him on this trip or not?”

Now that you understood what Ellie wanted to know, you couldn’t prevent a bitter laugh from bubbling out of your lips. You had been afraid that things were about to turn genuinely serious there for a second. “Why the fuck would Joel ask me to go anywhere with him? You’ve heard him. I’m ‘quite frankly as useful as a chocolate teapot in the desert heat,’” you said, mimicking Joel’s drawl for the last bit.

For once, Ellie didn’t fire back with a comment about how you were as useless as a chocolate teapot. She really must have been sick, because she just turned back around and was silent again. Well, if the rest of this trip went by without Ellie’s typical useless chitchat, you could count that as a victory. You: one; Ellie: somewhere in the fucking thousands.

Unfortunately, she did not remain speechless. “He had a girl once, you know.”

Her tone was so different all of a sudden. You frowned at the back of her head. What did Joel’s past have to do with anything? He tolerated you because Ellie—for reasons that were beyond you—liked having you around.

“A daughter or a girlfriend?” you asked.

Again, Ellie fell silent. Obviously, she was still thinking about the girl, though, because her thin shoulders pinched together. You were only just starting to feel a burning annoyance at her for bringing the subject up if she wasn’t going to elaborate when she finally got her damn tongue back on track.

“A girlfriend,” she said quietly.

“Before or after?”

“After. I met her once. Tess.”

“Tess.”

What kind of woman had Tess been, you wondered? Tough, presumably, to have lasted that long. Joel took any and every insinuation that Ellie was anything other than his daughter so badly that Tess must have been old enough to be romantically involved with him instead. You imagined a tall woman, quiet, with smoldering coals in her eyes instead of fire. Maybe she had been a better shot than you, or more likely she had done something productive with her life. She’d definitely have been whole, at least, probably didn’t go around chopping off limbs in a wild attempt to stave off the inevitable burning of eternity.

Wait. Why the fuck did you care what Joel’s old girlfriend was like? You ought to have wished she was still around so she could fill in as parent-slash-guardian when he was gone. It was Joel’s fault you were being dragged on a horse out into the middle of nowhere to begin with!

While these unsettling thoughts flipped through your head, Ellie appeared to be lost in thought. You could not see her eyes from where you were sitting, but she held the reins loosely in her hands, unmoving other than the occasional twist to get Callus Two back on what she must have felt was the right track. Even more irritated to find that she could escape your presence that easily, you cleared your throat.

Ellie gave a fucking ridiculous start and said “What?” with obvious frustration, which you ignored.

“Where the hell is your dad anyway?” you asked.

Too much longer and the clickers would be out—and it wouldn’t easy to keep them from hearing the steady pounding of Callus Two’s hooves. Maybe a horse could take out a few of them on its own; maybe not. You weren’t all that eager to find out firsthand.

As soon as the question was out of your mouth, Ellie’s shoulders hunched again so that her shoulders were up around her ears. “Joel isn’t—”

But whatever Joel wasn’t (the possibilities were endless), you never got to hear. Laughter filled the air at several different pitches, and noise echoed against the tree trunks eerily in the red-orange light of the evening.

The smart thing to do probably would have been to keep going—but hell, you weren’t the one driving. Frowning, Ellie pulled your ride to a complete stop. In the shadows beyond Callus Two’s path, five darker shadows shifted, closer and closer, until their owners appeared: three ragtag men and a couple of equally ragged women. As always in bands such as these, there was an apparent leader; the dark-haired, relatively clean-shaven man stepped forward so that his relatively clean-shaven face showed clearly in the sun. As the laughter died away, he smiled a disarming smile that showed a surprisingly whole set of teeth.

“Oh, he’s far enough away, darling. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.”

Ellie frowned down at the man. “Who the fuck are you?” she asked, tone mild.

None of the five had weapons drawn, though several backpacks had iron poles sticking out of their tops and the man in front had a sawed-off rifle in plain sight. For all of Ellie’s tense curiosity, however, his eyes were focused squarely on you. He did not even seem to have heard Ellie speak.

“How you doin’, sweetheart?” he asked, sauntering forward as casually as fuck.

Your eyes felt so wide that they might pop out of their sockets. Your fingers had once again latched onto Ellie’s hip as your only anchor to this goddamn earth. “Looks like that crazy plan of yours worked—‘less you just go runner slower than the rest of us.”

Your companion twisted in the saddle to gape at you. “You know him?”

You would have known him anywhere. Seeing him, your chest ached as badly as the day you had met, and once again you tasted meat in the back of your throat, the first real meal you had had in years and years and years.

Worse still, your sudden and extreme klutziness had not passed. Walking was manageable most of the time, but climbing? You could probably forget that. Joel’s continued swim lessons did not boost your morale. Arm or no arm, however, you were pretty fucking sure you weren’t getting out of the settlement. Everyone just turned a deaf ear to your requests to leave.

As the weather grew warmer, you grew cagier. Even Ellie began to tire of your attitude. “How about you suck it up and do the jobs assigned to you?” she would demand. “Focus on not fucking those up, and maybe Maria’ll trust you with something more exciting!”

But how you were supposed to suck it up when a line of cut-rate hunters paraded to the gates in front of you every fucking morning, you had no idea. They would pass by the farming patch assigned to you, and all you could do was glower at them in return.

Farming was the absolute worst fucking job that Tommy had come up with for you yet, barring teaching, but you weren’t about to remind anyone of that fiasco. You thought kitchen duty had been bad? Ha! The little plot of land dedicated to the attempt at growing corn was crammed into one corner of the settlement and looked after by twelve different people. When you weren’t bumping elbows trying to pull weeds, you were banging into everyone else tearing up grass for another patch.

It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure that farming outside was a better idea, but Tommy had his reasons. They were not reasons that anyone explained to you. Ellie would mutter them around you sometimes when she got fed up with the rest of them keeping you in the dark. Part of you appreciated the subtle gesture; it meant that you could act smug towards Joel when he got particularly aggravating. Another part of you wished she wouldn’t bother. Did she really think you gave two flying fucks whether or not some of the night watch was getting shot at during their shifts? Less of them meant it would be easier for you to break out for a midnight stroll.

But rules were rules, whether or not people gave a reason for them. Only the hunters and the watchmen were allowed outside. Ellie’s classes had been moved into a small, stuffy building inside, too. You got the feeling that if she had not been allowed swim lessons, she would have long since run off herself.

After another long day of breaking ground for the future sugar beet plantation, you returned to your closet-sized room to be alone. Your lack of skill in handling any sort of instrument with grace meant that your team was forever on your ass about doing things right. You could scream at them all you liked, but they had figured out by now that you couldn’t do jack shit to them, and that meant a never-ending tirade of insults and jokes at your expense. Add to that the fact that showers didn’t exist anymore and you were dirtier than you could remember being in years, and you wanted no part of the late dinner set up for those that took a little longer to finish their work.

You had just settled into your filthy blankets for the night when someone rapped on your door. Assuming it to be the man from next door to shout about how you’d stolen his fucking pillows while he was out the previous week, you only turned over and shut your eyes. The pounding only continued.

Ten straight minutes passed with him pounding a steady beat into the door. The only thing that changed was the intensity of the knock. It got to the point where it felt like he was pounding a steady beat into your head as well. For fuck’s sake, they were just pillows, and you’d given them back to him as soon as he tried to shove your head into the wall!

“I don’t have anything else of yours asshole,” you snapped as you threw the door open. It flew open so hard that it hit the wall outside your room with an echoing bang. A few complaints drifted through the rest of the hallway. “Yeah, like you and Mr. Nine weren’t keeping the rest of us up with your screaming last night, Miss Eleven!”

It had become apparent upon opening your door that your visitor was not your next door neighbor. No, that would have been too easy. Instead, Joel stood there, and he looked slightly amused when you finally turned your attention to him. Entertainment had not been what you were going for. You snorted and stuck out your chin as you leaned on the doorframe.

“What do you want? I don’t have any of your pillows either.”

“You’d have a hell of a time getting ‘em,” he said, already turning to leave. This meant, in Joel speak, that you were to follow and not waste time asking questions. You practically had to bite your fucking tongue off to avoid the urge. As you did so, you glanced once at your empty bed, then pulled your door shut behind you. Joel had not waited for you. He was still striding down the dark hallway when you caught up with him.

“If you’re about to tell me we’re going for a midnight swim, I swear to God I am killing you and leaving your corpse to rot right here.”

He answered by opening the door that led outside and gesturing sharply for you exit the building. With a massive sigh and roll of your eyes, you did. Now that the sun was down and had been so for several hours, it was really fucking cold outside. It was probably late March or early April, and snow was still not entirely unheard of at night—which meant that you didn’t want to be out there. It was cold enough inside. Scowling, you thrust your unprotected hands into your armpits and stamped your feet until Joel reappeared again.

“Yes, because I want you to catch hypothermia,” Joel said. His tone of sarcasm was almost identical to Ellie’s; at least you knew where she got it. Before he gave you a real answer, he started to lead you across the grounds. His voice, then, was muffled, except for the occasions when he turned his head enough that he could make sure you were following. “We’re low on watchers for tonight. Ellie says you’re goin’ stir-crazy. Figured putting you on duty might help alleviate some of your frustrations.”

You had two options now: Take the assignment like a champ and get killed by an intruder, or complain about having to go alone and have to admit you weren’t up to snuff. Neither sounded particularly appealing.

Joel caught the meaning of your silence. “Ellie and I’ll be there, too.”

The fact that he could read you so easily was really fucking annoying. Your face didn’t warm; it exploded with heat. “Fucking bastard! That’s not—”

“Let’s forgo the tantrum tonight, shall we?”

He came to the place in the wall where you were presumably supposed to be stationed. Joel was too good for stairs or doors, so he simply hefted himself up. While he busied himself arranging his things, you stood on the ground, frowning at the lights in a few of the plant’s windows.

Spring had revealed a number of untruths that had been shared with you upon arrival: Namely, that Tommy’s settlement was not, exactly, a power plant—at least not one that burnt fossil fuel. It was actually a dam. The water had frozen before you got there, which explained Joel’s comment about the gates needing fuel. Now that the rivers were running again, Jackson looked almost like a real town.

“’Scuse me, but are you planning to join us?”

You looked up to see Joel crouched over the edge of the wall with one meaty hand extended in your direction. Biting back a retort that you’d much rather go join your bed, you neared and jumped high enough to snatch his fingers. Joel caught you and lugged you upwards. A moment later, you tumbled over the cement and onto the flat portion of the wall.

A flash of light caught your eye, and you looked up to see what could only be described as a makeshift camp site. The light came from a tiny fire burning brightly in between two rickety chairs. Ellie sat in one chair, grinning at your inability to land upright. At her side were her backpack, a small stack of comic books, and a few bags of…fucking marshmallows?

“What, are we having a party instead?” you asked as you stood and brushed the dirt off your sleeves.

“Why not?” Ellie replied, settling into her chair. You noticed there was not one for you, but then decided that you didn’t care. They both looked uncomfortable as fuck, and you’d rather Joel spend a miserable night of having splinters shoved into his back than you. Grumbling, you tramped over to the space in the middle and collapsed there.

“I don’t know, because there’s a fucking sniper out there that’s picking us off, and we’ll probably get killed?”

“We’re not gonna get killed,” Joel said. “And it’s not a sniper.”

“Oh yeah? How the fuck do you know, Mr. Big Shot?”

“‘Cause a sniper would’ve managed to kill somebody by now. Besides, it’s not the right kind of bullets being shot. It’s just someone out there with a bone to pick, and I reckon we can manage them before they manage us.”

“And so we’re having a party?” you asked flatly.

“It’s a campout. It’s a family tradition, and Ellie hasn’t got to go on one yet.”

“You mean sitting in the dark and waiting for the clickers to get you doesn’t count?”

“Aw, lighten up, [Name],” Ellie broke in. “There are four other teams on the lookout, and me and Joel aren’t going anywhere. Marshmallow?”

You shoved the offered bag away. Your stomach shuddered at the thought of how out of date those had to be, but Ellie just shrugged and popped one in her mouth like it was nothing. Great. So now you were expected to be awake for at least five more hours, and you’d still have to be up in time to water the corn. On top of all that, you had to deal with Ellie and Joel’s fucking nonsense all the night long.

At least it did not take long for either of them to fall silent. Soon, the only sounds were the fire cracking quietly and Ellie chewing on her snacks. You tried your best to ignore that last one and simply stare alertly into the surrounding woods. At the first sign of trouble, you were going to dive back over the wall and let your two companions deal with their own problems.

“Is that what it was like?” Ellie asked after cleaning out her first bag of marshmallows.

She had clearly asked the question of Joel, but he appeared not to hear her. Fuck, that meant it fell to you to work things out. “What was what like?”

“Camping with your dad.”

“No,” you said.

“Why not?”

“Because things out there weren’t going to kill us.”

“That’s not true,” Joel said. “There were always mountain lions and bears and the like.”

“Fine. People weren’t trying to kill us.”

“Serial killers.”

“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“It’s working, ain’t it?”

“How about you, Joel?” Ellie asked hastily. “Is this anything like when you went camping with your dad?”

Joel picked at his chin for a moment. “Always went camping with my mom. Dad died.”

“You mean…before?”

“Yeah.” He drew out the word in a long sigh, though his body language indicated that he was not bothered by the subject matter in the slightest. “’S no big deal. Mom was good at what she did. Tommy cain’t even remember ‘im.”

“What happened?” Your voice was a murmur; it was not a question you wanted answered literally. In it was a string of more serious questions of the kind you asked yourself every night: What happened to all of us? Why do people leave? Why does everyone spend their lives clinging desperately to their fleshy cicada shell until their souls are cracked out of it?

Joel answered literally anyway. “Drunk driving accident. I was six.”

Your mouth half-opened, but to say what, you didn’t know. That was just so…mundane. To think that there were people out there still alive that could remember when people didn’t die alone in the middle of the woods, half-eaten with fungus or hunger or bullets.

“How about you, [Name]?” Ellie asked. “What happened to your dad?”

This was fitting payback for you having asked Joel. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the images and sounds started playing as vibrantly as a movie: Shouting, jeering, gunshots, makeshift bladed weapons, fire, crying, burning, running faster than you had ever run at any state competition, finding Brycen, wrenching him away from his sobbing friends, running faster, running farther, running into the dark.

“He—”

“Shh.” Joel lifted an arm. You fell silent and shot him a confused look. His eyes were fixed somewhere in the tree line. “I think I heard something.”

Ellie quickly shifted into a better offensive position and lifted her pistol. You shrank into the shadows. Something in the distance snapped, like a branch underneath a heavy boot. Joel stood with his finger already on the trigger of his revolver. Silence buzzed like a nest of angry hornets; you almost longed for the sound of a ticking watch to break the quiet.

“I can get this entire place up in arms before you get to the gate.” Joel hardly had to lift his voice to get it to carry all the way across the grounds. Almost everyone else was asleep, and the other watch teams weren’t making any noise. “Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you comin’ out now, nice and easy, with your hands above your head and your gun where I can see it.”

No one answered. You held your breath, waiting. Then several more twigs snapped, very loudly at first, then faded. In a flash, Joel was to the outer edge of the wall. Something flew through the air at Ellie. She caught it, and when she looked at herself, you saw Joel’s walkie-talkie in her hands.

“Hey. Wait,” Ellie said, but Joel cut her off with a sharp look.

“C’mon, [Name].”

“What?” Ellie demanded.

He looked at her. “If something happens, I need you to get ahold the other teams and Tommy and Maria. They might actually believe you if you are the one that makes the call.”

“But she can’t even—”

“Don’t argue. Just pay attention.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he leaped over the wall. A moment later, a soft whump sound announced that he had landed. A very prolonged pause followed. Your eyes remained fixed on the point where Joel had disappeared, then flicked over toward Ellie. To say she looked displeased at the developing situation was an understatement.

“Well?” she asked, in a tone that clearly indicated that most of her frustration was to be directed at you. Why the hell was that? It wasn’t as though you’d fucking asked Joel if you could come along with him. Speaking of Joel, if you waited much longer, you’d have to deal with him giving you shit about that, too. Without another glance in Ellie’s direction, you tossed yourself over the side of the wall. It surprised even you when you landed on your feet. Joel, much to your surprise, was too involved with the current predicament to say anything, let along offer you a typical jab about your lack of coordination.

“You ready?” he whispered.

All you could do in answer was withdraw your own handgun from the makeshift pocket stitched to the outside of your frayed pack.

That must have been all he wanted, because he gave you a single nod and continued, “Good. Now, stay close and don’t wander. You were right earlier when you said things out here will you.”

“Things back there will kill me, too,” you muttered, but this elicited no further response. Joel crept across the barren land surrounding the settlement. Every so often, he would pause and listen intently for any indication of an attack that didn’t come. Several minutes of this went by before he slipped through the electric fence at the very border of the territory and into the forest beyond.

Once inside the trees, everything sounded more muffled than before. Something scurried in the undergrowth. An owl hooted dolefully above your heads. You held your breath, praying that whoever it was that had disturbed that little “campout” had just run off. Unless there was another convenient plank—or better but more unlikely, a lead pipe—sitting in the middle of the woods, you were royally fucked. There was just no way that someone trying to pick off watchmen at Jackson had come alone.

Joel held out an arm so quickly that you almost barreled into it. Once you came to a complete stop, you looked up to see him holding one finger up to his lips. That was enough to tell you pay attention if you valued your life, and you most certainly did. You’d come this far; you weren’t about to give up now.

He motioned for you to loop around. Maybe Joel had heard something that you hadn’t. Maybe he just wanted you out of the way. As he slunk into the darkness of a nearby cluster of trees, you took a deep breath. Well, you’d wanted to be a big girl and be out on your own. Time to put those big girl panties on and get the job done. You picked through the branches in the direction that Joel had indicated. Probably he was taking care of things without you there to fuck things up. Typical Joel.

For a long while, you heard only the sound of your boots scrunching into the still-moist leaves beneath them and your breath whistling quietly in and out of your nose. Your eyes squinted in the utter dark. The moon was nearly finished waning, and the light you did have wasn’t much help, especially since you did not want to risk turning on your flashlight in case there were runners around to complicated matters further. Then it occurred to you: You’d last seen Joel quite a while back, maybe even as long as fifteen minutes ago.

You were lost, and there was no way of calling out without attracting attention.

Luckily for you, this situation soon resolved itself without you having to do much of anything. Another something nearby cracked much too loudly to be a small animal. When you whirled toward the noise, a loud bang accompanied a bullet whizzing straight toward you. You tumbled backward without thought, landing on your butt with a loud, “Shit!”

A dark shadow rushed out of the trees. You lifted your own gun and fired three very shaky shots before your attacker was upon you. Thick, gloved fingers wrapped around your throat; you thrashed about, whacking every inch of them with your limbs. Your pistol smacked into their head; you might have managed to smash them into a nearby trunk a few times. Still, things were looking bad—until the sound of even heavier running footsteps erupted into your clearing. Your assailant froze for one brief, wild second, and then they ran off. Joel appeared immediately after. Upon spotting you gasping for breath on the ground, he looked around, made a few quick steps as if to pursue the now-invisible intruder, then seemed to think better of it and crouched down next to you.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Y-Yeah,” you answered, unable to accompany the words with any of your usual vitriol because you weren’t sure that you were.

He didn’t answer, not really. All he said was, “I just need to figure out how to introduce them to people without having a riot on my hands. Don’t want ‘em thinking their vote didn’t matter.”

Needless to say, this did not reassure you. So what if they thought their vote didn’t matter? It hadn’t, had it? Did Tommy want his people to be safe or dead? You followed him around asking questions for days after your return. It was not as though you had anything else to do with your time. But somehow you must have managed to push even easygoing Tommy too far. He rewarded by letting you accompany Maria around Jackson.

She appreciated your company even less. You couldn’t aim a gun; you couldn’t use a knife; you could barely open a door. In a word, you were useless, and Maria didn’t have the time or inclination to baby you. The gesture might have been refreshing and appreciated, if not for what you ended up doing instead: spending a lot of time with Ellie. Whenever she wasn’t in school, she was with Maria, and Maria took every opportunity to ditch the two of you and let Ellie babysit.

One such afternoon, most of Jackson was empty. Winter would soon be drawing to an end, but the nights weren’t getting any warmer, and much of the firewood stock had been depleted. Every able-bodied villager not on guard duty left the walls to help gather more. Inside remained only adults ready to shoot at the first sign of danger, the children deemed too small to fell a tree, and you. No one would trust you with an ax.

Since the day was nice despite the chilly air blowing in from the north, Ellie insisted on staying outside. She didn’t have school—both of her teachers were out with the rest—so you got the “honor” of hanging out with her all morning, listening to her constant chatter about some friend of hers that got bit and where she’d first learned to ride a horse.

“Uh-huh…Uh-huh…Uhhhh-huh,” you found yourself muttering on repeat as the sun dipped in the sky. Where the fuck was everyone? Sitting in huffy silence in the woods would have been preferable to this torture.

“Are you even listening?”

“Uh…huh.”

Something popped loudly against the wall you leaned against. You sat up with a high-pitched “shit” to see Ellie sitting in front of you, her brow furrowed. “You know, losing an arm doesn’t make you deaf, bitch.”

“I told you not to call me that,” you said with a scowl.

Her eyebrows lifted. “If it’s the only way to get your attention, I’m gonna call you bitch.”

Clearly, Ellie was not in the mood to bicker. Or maybe she as and you weren’t. The cold seemed to aggravate your ghost limb. You sighed and tugged your legs closer to your chest. As you did, you took another look at your hand. If there was one positive thing you could say about just about anything, it was that the scarring from your burns could have been worse. At least it hadn’t ruined that hand, too.

“What the fuck did you just throw at me anyway?” you asked.

Ellie answered by throwing another. A tiny spark shot up from where whatever it was hit the wall. “It’s a snapper,” she explained. “Some kind of old-timey firework. Doesn’t do jack shit, though. I’m seeing if they’d make a good distraction.”

“Why do you need a fucking distraction? Can’t you just shoot whoever’s attacking you in the head?”

“If you’d been listening to me earlier, you’d know I’m looking into methods that don’t involve shooting things for, you know, when people can’t shoot.”

“I didn’t ask for your help, you little shit.”

Ellie blinked at you, then threw a second snapper at your face. It sailed by so close to your cheek that you felt the paper brush your chin there.

“Fuck!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she said, rolling her eyes and tossing four more of the tiny white things at the wall behind your head. “Besides, I wasn’t talking about you specifically. Don’t take everything so fucking personally. God.”

“Who else needs shitty fireworks to take out infected, jackass?” you demanded. That only earned you another roll of the eyes. If you hadn’t been so exhausted from the morning’s chores, you might have attempted to backhand her. But Ellie, as always, knew she was safe.

“As I was saying,” she said as she lifted her eyebrows, practically begging you to interrupt, “we’re not gonna have bullets forever. It’s not like there are people making them anymore. The military’s practically gone, after all. Eventually, we’re all gonna be stuck without firearms. I figure, why sit around on our asses ‘till we’re forced to adapt?”

She had a point not that you were in any mood to admit it. “So I guess I’m just lucky enough to be your guinea pig?”

A grin flashed across her face. “And lucky enough that you’ll have an edge on everyone else when guns become useless.”

“Lucky me,” you muttered. Then you gestured at her small pile of snappers with your chin. “Where’d you pick those up, anyway? Tommy got those in storage too?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Maybe. But I snagged these on the way back here. They were in a garage. Joel says fireworks came in bigger varieties though. Maybe I can find some of those, or I can make them or—”

Ellie broke off, suddenly alert and looking at something to your left. Heavy footsteps echoed from the nearby doorway. You tensed, though you didn’t bother to look at who was making their way toward you. If it was anyone other than a member of Ellie’s family unit, you’d need to take off without warning. You wouldn’t put it past one of the other Jackson citizens to try offing you while your shepherds were away. A moment later, Ellie’s genuine smile answered your question.

“Done with the lumberjack business already?” she asked.

“I got some time off,” Joel answered. When you finally deigned to look up at him, you saw that he was carrying his heavy pack normally reserved for scavenging trips.

Ellie must have noticed that, too, because she perked up considerably. “Is Tommy sending us out?”

He shook his head as he adjusted the well-worn straps. “Nah. I just got a few hours off to do something I’ve been meanin’ to do for a bit. Might need some supplies if we run into anything, but I don’t think we will.”

“We? I get to come?”

“You’re the whole point, baby girl.”

Joel waved his arm in the direction of the closest exit. Ellie hastily crammed her remaining snappers into her pack, shoved one arm into a strip, and jumped to her feet. When Joel started to walk away, she followed.

“Field trip,” she said. “Cool.”

You watched them leave, relieved. With Ellie gone, you might be able to sneak in a nap before dinner. Or even sleep through dinner, depending on how late the two of them stayed out. That was one day where your desire for sleep was definitely greater than your desire for watery, bland meat and whatever canned vegetables Jackson still had left. Maria was busy on patrol and likely wouldn’t care to find you and ask you to better yourself.

These pleasant plans were rudely interrupted by Joel coming to a stop so suddenly that Ellie nearly walked straight into him. She took a wide step backward. Then he turned and stomped back toward you.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sitting,” you answered.

“Wrong answer. Get off your ass and come along.”

“Why do I have to go on your fucking errands?”

“You think anyone is keen on leaving you here alone?”

“What, because I’ll run off?” you demanded. “I came back with you two, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, maybe that’s the problem.”

Joel watched you for a long moment before thrusting his hand out in your direction. All you did in return was scowl. You were sore enough that the help was tempting, but not quite tempting enough. He didn’t really need to know how drained you felt after a morning spent following Ellie around and scrapping the decades-old graffiti off the inner walls. You shoved his hand away and got to your feet yourself. After another thirty seconds of staring, Joel rolled his eyes and marched off again.

You followed, but you didn’t have to be happy or quick about it. Both Joel and Ellie made it to the gates before you caught up. Once you did, one of the guards on the wall nodded. If you expected an explanation once your little group got outside, you were sorely disappointed. Joel led the way through the naked trees in silence, and for once Ellie didn’t seem to feel the need to fill that silence with chatter. At first, her uncharacteristic lack of yammering made you nervous, but then you remembered that she hadn’t got to leave the settlement since getting back three and a half weeks ago either. Stir-crazy was an emotion you could sympathize with.

Whatever was up with Joel, though, you couldn’t say. After he’d finished icing your hand, he’d gone back and reheated your coffee. As much as you’d wanted to throw it back in his face, it was coffee and you’d had to accept it and offer him a cup for “being nice.” Since returning to Jackson, you hadn’t seen him much outside of when he came to relieve Ellie from guard duty, but when you did see him, things were different. He wasn’t as much of an asshole, and somehow you didn’t like it. Worse was Ellie, who had taken up smirking on the occasions she found you and Joel together. You didn’t understand the smirk, but you did understand that it made you want to hit her even more than you usually did.

It was late afternoon by the time he stopped in a wide clearing. No movement. No sound. Not a one of the firewood-seekers were around.

“Uh…is this it?” Ellie asked.

“Yep,” said Joel. He watched her expectantly. What he was expecting, you had no idea. There was literally nothing there except a mostly-thawed pond. Ellie let out a gasp when she noticed this feature herself.

“Wait a minute,” she said, quickly backing away. “You’re not—You wouldn’t—”

“It’s time, baby girl.”

“Fuck no.”

“You’ve got to learn some time.”

“Not today.”

She was nearly to the trees; Joel started to go after her, slowly, with one hand outstretched. “It’s not that deep.”

“I don’t care. I’m not getting in that. I’m not going to—” While Ellie was busy protesting, Joel got close enough to snatch her. Ellie shrieked as he walked back toward the pond. “Joel! No! I said fucking no, Joel!”

“Sorry, kid,” Joel said in a tone that indicated he was really more amused than repentant. Though she continued to scream obscenities, he let her go. She hit the shallows with an impressive splash.

“Joel!” Ellie howled.

“What, you the Wicked Witch of the West now?” he asked as she glared up at him from the water. “You melt in water? You’ve never acted this way before.”

“Because getting in the water always had a point! And I had a raft! You want me to fucking…to fucking learn how to swim!”

He spread his arms out in front of him. “Ya caught me. Anyway, now that you’re all wet, you might as well get started.”

You’d never seen Ellie look quite as pissed off at someone other than you before. To his credit, Joel didn’t seem the slightest bit intimidated, or so you thought until you remembered that Ellie was a teenager and shouldn’t have been intimidating to anyone. Fuck, you were getting soft. Probably because the people that kept insisting on keeping an eye on you also insisted on constant displays of familial bonding while you were present.

Scowling, Ellie stood, peeled off her pack, and dumped it on the shore. A ghost of a smile tugged at Joel’s lips as he set his own pack next to it. She looked somewhat surprised when he waded past her into a deeper section of pond.

“I’m not gonna let you drown, baby girl,” he said. “We’re just going to do a few strokes.”

Suddenly her anger turned to nervousness so palpable even you could see it. “I, uh…”

“Come on. What’s going to happen if something happens to me? You want to get stuck out in the middle of a lake? Or fall off a building and drown? There’s not always going to be someone around to carry you.”

“I don’t want carried,” she muttered.

“Then do you want to die?”

“No. I…” She trailed away and shot an embarrassed look at you. Joel noticed this. He laughed.

“Oh, don’t worry. [Name] has to learn, too.”

“What?” you barked. Joel chuckled harder. “Oh, I don’t fucking think so. I took swim lessons decades ago.”

Joel nodded as though he agreed with your logic—then: “You tried swimming now that you only have one arm?”

You and Ellie froze at the exact same time for entirely different reasons: You because fuck you hadn’t thought of that; Ellie because now she had a rival she had a pretty good chance of winning against.

“You brought me here to make fun of me,” you said.

He shrugged. “I brought you here to make Ellie feel more comfortable.”

“Same thing.”

“If you want to look at it that way. ” He shrugged again before pointing toward where Ellie stood. “Now get going.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? That water will be freezing. I’m not getting in in my clothes.”

“You want to go back and get your swimsuit?” Joel asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You fall in the water during a fight—or, I don’t know, just walking, you’re so graceful—you don’t get to pick what temperature it is or what you’re wearing.”

He had a point. Why did everyone keep having those today? You were losing ground every which way, and your hope for a nap was fading quickly into the distance. Joel rolled his eyes and ran a hand down his face before he looked for a moment at both you and Ellie in turn.

“You need to learn this. If you start drowning in the middle of things, no one is going to notice.” Joel kept his eyes on you the longest. Anger broiled just underneath your skin. It would take you the longest to learn, you knew. Ellie didn’t have to retrain herself to swim a different way.

“We do this here,” Joel continued, “I’m not going to let either of you drown. And we’ll go slow. Real slow.”

Ellie watched carefully for your reaction. It was thus: You rolled your eyes massively and dumped your coat onto the dry ground. Without saying a word, you tramped over to where she stood, took a massive, shuddering breath, and stepped into the water. It soaked you up to your hips. You’d been absolutely right before, too. The pond was freezing. As you shivered beside her, Ellie smirked and pushed deeper in.

“I’ll go first,” she said. “So you can acclimate.”

The lack of pursuit did improve the trek somewhat. At last, your pack, having been emptied by your previous travel buddies, had been filled. A gas mask hung from one strap. That had come in handy just earlier that day. Less importantly, but perhaps better on the added cheer front, you were allowed a fire.

Not that Joel was happy about it. Fires meant people, animals, and related things could find you. But snow remained in purple-white piles against the trees from the fall that morning and a hard freeze linger in the air. Sometimes you had to pick your poison.

Heat didn’t seem like much of an antidote at somewhere around five in the morning anyway. Huddled as you might close to the flames, poke as you did at the tinder with the rusted remains of a coat hanger, you shivered violently underneath your worn coat. You supposed you should have just been grateful one of those hunters had even had a coat your size to steal. Somehow, you were not.

It might have been several days since you bashed that man’s head in, but your muscles hadn’t forgotten. Long gone was the body used to cross-country running for the track team, to carrying a broken ten-year-old for miles every day. The adrenaline drained quickly away and left your remaining arm near-useless. The day after, you hadn’t been able to move it at all. Even now, you had to concentrate not to grimace simply stirring the instant coffee in your camping pot.

“Shit,” you whispered as the dented spoon slipped from your fingers again. For a moment, you didn’t bother to pick it up. Instead, you wrapped what limbs you had left around your torso and scowled up at the sky. You didn’t know what was worse at that point: the phantom pain in your lost arm, or the real pain in the one you still had.

The coffee would probably taste like piss, which only served to disappoint you farther. Sure, you’d snapped at Ellie about not needing a machine to make coffee, but fuck if you yourself knew how to do it otherwise. Back in the day, you went to a Starbucks for your caffeine fix. No one ever asked you to do it yourself. Still, even you could figure out that hot water and coffee grounds did not a beverage make.

Another annoyance of the cordyceps apocalypse: You could no longer tell time, not precisely. The watch you’d taken with you to the California zone had long since died. Before that, it hadn’t taken long for cell phones to become useless. At night in a forest, you couldn’t see the moon. Not that telling time was a particularly important survival skill, but your inability to do so rankled even more in your current condition.

It must have been nearing dawn, though, because you heard something move. You stiffened for only a moment before you saw Joel sitting up. His face was difficult to read, dark as your surroundings were and with your eyes filled with the light from the fire. It could not be Ellie, though; the shadow was too large. It didn’t move right to be non-human either. The realization that you knew the thing moving did not cause the tension in your shoulders to lessen.

Maybe he sensed that, although for the life of you, you couldn’t figure out why the hell your feelings would matter. His walk to the fire was uncharacteristically slow and steady—like he was sneaking up on a clicker, not coming to talk to one of his traveling companions.

When he got close enough for you to see his face, Joel paused. You caught a flash of pink tongue against the corner of his lips before he nodded at your pot of mud-like substance. “Making some coffee?” You blinked. His shoulders lifted and fell. “Smells good.”

“Thought I wasn’t supposed to take it,” you said, keeping your voice as low as Joel did. Ellie remained asleep after all. You didn’t need to get him riled up by waking her.

Joel shrugged as he sat down across from you. He watched you, for some reason, before looking away. “You weren’t, but,” he turned back, and for a split-second, you thought he might have been smiling, “I might not complain as much if you let me have some.”

You snorted as you took up your spoon again. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Worth a shot.” He didn’t seem too bothered, and the next moment he lifted a hand and rubbed at his beard. You tried your best to ignore him and focus on your stirring. Burnt coffee was the last thing that you wanted, especially with Joel watching. Unfortunately, your arm still hurt too much to get away with nonchalance. “You want me to do that for you?”

“No,” you said flatly.

Why was Joel even talking to you? His watch shift was over, and he was likely to get cranky in the afternoon if he didn’t get his beauty rest. When you briefly looked up at him, you caught him roll his eyes. The next time he moved, you did not hear him until he had wrested the spoon from your fingers and shoved you over.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m not gonna steal your damn coffee, so don’t even start,” he said shortly.

You clamped your mouth shut over your stillborn protest. If you’d blurted it out, Joel might have spilled the water out, leaving you without coffee or fire. It was probably best to just let him do whatever it was he wanted. He was going to anyway.

Sullenly, you rubbed your stump to distract yourself from the silence. That was another thing the not-so-new world had. No more iTunes or internet radio. Just you and the great outdoors, and maybe the occasional tagalong you didn’t even want.

“So why didn’t you keep the plank?”

“Huh?” you asked. Caught off guard, you forgot to try to sound intelligent.

Joel was looking right at you; one corner of his mouth crinkled at your confusion. “That plank you used to kill that guy. Why didn’t you keep it?”

“Why would I keep it?”

“Well, you can’t shoot worth shit so—”

“I shot that other guy in the head!”

“Lucky shot. You deny it?” As usual, Joel saw straight through you. God, but that pissed you off, enough that you looked back down at your shoes to avoid seeing him look smug. “I’m just saying, if you can’t shoot ‘em, may as well beat ‘em. Make you less useless at least.”

“I still can barely move my arm, asshole,” you snapped. “And somehow that translates to less useless to you?”

“Look, you killed three men that night—”

“Because Ellie took out so many looking for you!”

you,” you muttered, but didn’t go farther than that. Even that, though, must have made you look like you were throwing a temper tantrum, because Joel waited a good long while before he asked:

“Ya done?”

“Just finish your fucking compliment.”

“Well, like I was saying,” he said, and there again was that thing that might have been a smile but no way in hell could have been, “you killed three men that night. On your own.”

“And?”

“And?” Joel snorted. “Why’s there gotta be an ‘and’? I was just sayin’, I recognize that you did a little better back there. Guess you’re trying. Can I have some coffee now?”

“Why would I give you my coffee after that?”

It was getting difficult to keep your voice low enough to let Ellie sleep. Judging by the lightening of the sky through the easternmost branches, she wouldn’t get to stay that way much longer anyway. You knew waking her up would piss off Joel—though it was perfectly clear that Joel didn’t care if he pissed you off. Even with your full glower directed at him, he just stared at you over the dying fire.

“Ellie said you’d share with me if I was nice.”

“Well, you aren’t fucking nice!” you snarled.

You expected more of a fight after that. Maybe that was why you said it. After so many years of traipsing the country side trying not to die, you appreciated routine. Arguing with Joel was about as routine as your life got those days, and those familiar altercations had been lacking while you fled the quarantine zone gang. But you did not get a fight. Instead, to your very great surprise, Joel doubled over with laughter.

Your mouth popped open. Was he going insane? Not the scary fungus kind of insane, but regular run-of-the-mill insane? Then after a minute or so, he sat up, wiped a tear from his eye, and appeared entirely normal.

“What the fuck was that about?” you asked after another moment of silence.

Joel just shook his head, still smiling. You are, without doubt, the most angry and predictable woman I have ever met.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re doin’ it again.” You scowled at him, and his smile widened. “I was teasin’, [Name]. All I meant was you made sure Ellie got out of there alive. ‘Spose I owe you a thank you for that.”

Somehow, the gratitude seemed genuine. You glanced to the left to see Ellie still in an exhausted heap on the frozen ground. She’d scraped away the worst of the ice and now lay underneath her spare jacket—and Joel’s, you suddenly noticed.

“Yeah, well,” you sighed, “she’s a good kid. I guess it wouldn’t benefit me at all to get her murdered at this point.”

“And I told you you’d regret it if you let her die.”

“I remember that. Distinctly.”

“Good. ‘Cause that’s still true. We’re not home yet.”

You stared blearily into the red embers of the fire and did not answer, maybe because you didn’t have an answer, maybe because you didn’t have the energy. “You’re right, though. She is a good kid. Maybe too good sometimes.”

Suddenly, you fixed your eyes on Joel’s face. Again, it struck you how odd they were together. Joel didn’t seem the type to knock some lady up and then spend the rest of his life looking after the baby. Besides, he kept a pretty constant refrain of “You’re not my daughter; you’re not their niece,” when in all other respects he certainly acted like she was.

“Where’d you find her anyway?” you asked.

“I—” Joel shut his mouth, shooting you another death glare. “None of your goddamn business.”

“God, okay. I was just curious.”

“Keep it to yourself,” he said, and lifted your pot from the fire before you could retort.

“Don’t you dare—Fuck!”

You had attempted to snatch the coffee from him. In the process, you pressed your palm straight to the hot metal. What choice did you have but to hold your hand there until you could slowly lower the pot to the ground? None, if you didn’t want to lose your precious cargo! A few mouthfuls still sloshed out into the snow, but you hardly had time to lament what with your skin blistering in front of your tearing eyes.

“What the hell are you doing?” Joel got to his feet, watching as you danced about the campsite.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” you whispered, as though that could somehow dull the pain. A scream clawed at your throat. When Joel appeared quite suddenly in front of you to grab your wrist, that scream died away.

“What,” he said again, “are you doing?”

“You were going to toss my coffee out, you fucker!” you said, and that time your voice cracked the approved volume level. “I couldn’t just let you—”

“I was going to ask you if you had a mug or something. Don’t blame me for your idiocy.”

“I’m not stupid!”

“Did I tell you to stick your hand on the pot?”

“Just shut up! God, I hate you!”

“Would you hold still? I want to put some ice on it.”

“Don’t you fucking touch me!”

He tugged you closer to him, close enough that you shut up. “I said hold still,” he growled.

Up that close and person, you couldn’t deny how large Joel was. You swallowed and held still. With one hand still clamped around your wrist and his eyes still fixed on your face, he very slowly bent, scooped up a handful of snow, and pressed it into your palm. While he held it there with his own hand, Joel stared at you. You stared back, at a loss for words.

“You guys gonna stand there all day holding hands, or can I go back to sleep?”

You looked over to see Ellie half-risen from her cocoon, one fist pressing into an eye. Heat rushed to your face; you tried to tear away, but Joel’s grip on your hand was too strong. If you attempted escape, it would only hurt you worse.

“Go back to sleep, baby girl,” Joel said. When you looked back at him, he had a smile on his face. “We’re just gonna rest today. Save up energy for the trip tomorrow.”

Ellie watched him for a moment, allowing her eyes to drift once or twice to you. Very slowly, she smirked. You didn’t know why, but that look on her face made you want to hit her. Joel’s fingers tightened around yours as though he somehow read your mind.

That was not to say that night watches weren’t boring as hell. You’d drawn the second watch that night. The only sound in the dilapidated room you sat in was Ellie’s quiet breathing. She’d woken you up two hours ago just as Joel left—to do what, he had not bothered to explain to you. Probably to see if he could find a way out of the quarantine zone. Four days stuck in that dingy apartment building, with, sure enough, a box full of infection scanners, but with a dwindling food supply and nearly no water.

You stretched in an attempt to get rid of the growing pain in your ass. Sitting all day long, trying not to move or make noise as the temperature dropped toward freezing, wasn’t much of a holiday in your book. Your movement did nothing but move your legs enough to stir the three Molotov cocktails sitting around your feet. Joel had stopped long enough to give you instructions: if anyone came, you were to lob those bombs at the doorway and get out with Ellie through the nearby emergency exit. Not exactly a shining tribute to your abilities, but it was actually the first time he’d willingly left you alone with her, though you chalked that up more to desperation than to any burgeoning respect he had for you.

With a stifled sigh, you shifted enough to look at Ellie. Despite the deep shadows of the room, you could see the dark marks of the clicker’s fingers on her neck. In the daylight, the bruises remained purple-yellow. Sometimes you caught Joel staring at them, somehow intent and soft at the same time, like he wanted to take them on himself. After the roof incident, Joel hadn’t spoken for a very long time, not until Ellie and he went off somewhere to have a private discussion.

He really was desperate, you thought, but for Ellie, not for himself. It was a weird thing to notice, and a weirder thing to be in the earthly hell humanity inhabited. Especially weird was the fact that Ellie didn’t seem desperate at all. Even as the days whiled away with no chances of escape, she remained as glib as ever. Ellie always controlled situations; the situations never controlled her. Even at fifteen, she just sort of exuded the feeling that she knew what she was doing. You wondered if you’d looked that impressive back when this all started. No. You’d been entirely out of your mind with fear. Out of your mind for four long years, only to come out sane enough to die.

You turned away before you could think more good thoughts about her. The last thing you needed was another tagalong kid to break your heart over. But even as you thought that, you relaxed a bit in the darkness and flipped back around. This was familiar, staying up in a dark room, with your stomach cramping and your brain wild with responsibility and anxiety. It was as though you had been transported back to those first eight months after you’d escaped the Northern California Zone. There you were, thrust again into a realm you had no training for, but that you had to stand up against for the sake of a child.

Your eyes settled briefly on the bandages wrapped around her arm. She never took them off, and you’d known her long enough that you wondered why. Most of the time, Ellie acted like they didn’t exist—unless she was looking at the infection scanners. Then her fingers would contract around the area as though she couldn’t keep them from doing so.

Shit, you were getting sentimental. Where the fuck was Joel? In a sudden fit of impatience, you twisted upward to peer out the grimy window. Nothing outside moved. At least you could be confident that Joel wouldn’t leave without Ellie—but that didn’t mean the gang in the zone hadn’t got ahold of him.

A burst of cold flashed across your skin as you hastily sank back down onto the dirty floor. If that was the case, what could you do? Joel doing the job instead was something you preferred. Though you couldn’t be certain, you thought you might have recognized a few of the shouts during that firefight.

If that was the case, and Joel really had got himself in trouble—

No. That couldn’t happen. If anyone could elude those guys, it was Joel. After all, he and Ellie slaughtered that entire camp almost a year ago, hadn’t they?

And why the fuck should you care anyway? If Joel got himself eaten, or even just staked outside the doors to serve as warning, that could only benefit you. Ellie was still green enough that you could probably get away from her. In fact, if Joel died, you’d bet your instant coffee Ellie wouldn’t be able to function when she found out.

Patience is a virtue—your dad had said that like it was going out of style. War, he told you time and time again, was spent mostly in waiting. The stretches where nothing happened were the worst, and if you wanted to keep your head, you learned how to stay calm during them.

You’d never managed to learn that particular lesson.

Sunrise would be several hours more in coming. You shifted a little in a vein effort to make yourself more comfortable. In the process, you knocked over one of the cocktail bottles. With a whispered expletive, you lurched forward to steady it—with your missing arm. It clattered onto the hard floor, and you stiffened instantly. They hadn’t found you yet, and you felt almost foolish.

Then you saw a circle of light quivering on the wall outside your room.

“Hey, man, I think I heard something up here,” you heard a man say.

“Probably the fucking rats. This place hasn’t been used in a shit ton of years,” a second man answered.

“Yeah, and we don’t know where that fucker and his girl went. Wouldn’t this be a good place to hide?”

“I don’t fucking know, dude. I just want to finish this and go to bed.”

“It’ll only take two minutes to check. You want me to tell the boss you let these guys go?”

“You want her to flay me alive? Man, I thought we were closer than that.”

“Ain’t got time for closeness in this world. Let’s go.”

Shit. Ellie remained asleep directly in front of the door leading to the flashlights. Only a few torn pieces of furniture stood in your room, and none that you felt safe enough to hide behind. The lights down the hallway danced across the window behind you. Your hand wrapped around the neck of one of the bottles as you tried to decide whether or not to wake Ellie.

You decided just as two men, one stocky, one with a dark shadow of hair on his chin, appeared in the doorway. They only had time to spot the slumbering girl on the floor before you launched the glass bottle with all your might toward them. Even as weak as you were, the distant was not so great that it didn’t reach. Flames burst upward, licking the wooden doorframe. Unfortunately, the makeshift bomb hit neither of the men.

“We got ‘em!” shouted the nearest man, the one with the naked face. The fire made his features blur in the surrounding darkness. You held your breath as you stared. The fire wouldn’t last forever, and you only had two more cocktails. But now they knew you were armed.

“Go tell the boys. I’ll hold them here,” he said.

The second man didn’t bother to respond. He disappeared back down the hall. The first man grinned widely at you and switched his flashlight off.

“You ladies are fucking fucked.”

“You’re fucking fucked,” you snarled. Fear clouded your ability to come up with anything cleverer. The fire by his feet began to die down. He noticed this as well, and in the moment it took him to take a step, you tossed the second bottle.

It struck him right in the chest. Maybe he had been too busy smirking to swat the cocktail away. Maybe you really had caught him off guard. Whatever the reason, the result remained the same: the man burst into flames. He screamed, beating wildly at the fire, but it had already caught in his hair.

Now was the time to move—now, before reinforcements arrived. Where you were going, you had no idea. How Joel would find you was equally a mystery. All you knew was that you had to get out, preferably with Ellie in tow. You turned toward her, intending to wake her up, only to see her already standing with the box of scanners in her arms.

“Let’s go,” she said.

She didn’t have to tell you twice. You paused only long enough to scoop up your last cocktail before you took off toward the adjoining hallway. God, you hoped it didn’t come down to a fight. After the incident with the roof, Ellie now had both guns and her knife. If anyone got too close, your Molotov wouldn’t be of any fucking use unless you wanted to go up in smoke, too. Oddly, you felt just as disinclined to go hell that night as you usually did.

The hallway was so dark that you could hardly see Ellie as she raced ahead of you. You hoped to whatever fucking deity had fucked things up so badly that an exit really did exist somewhere at the end of the corridor, one without a hoard of angry gang members gathering outside.

Ellie crashed through a door, and, following her, you found only another wide lobby on the other side. You shouldn’t have been surprised; the military changed the architecture of buildings at zone borders so much that everything got topsy-fucking-turvy trying to keep everyone from leaving. Even if this had been your zone, you wouldn’t have been able to find your way out. The first time you’d left had been the only time you left.

Your companion distracted you by throttling a nearby cabinet until it stood in front of the door you had just exited. Without another word, she hurried over to a nearby bar to shove her box of loot behind it. She was taking the safety off her gun when she resurfaced.

“What are you doing?” you asked as she started to rush off toward another hallway.

“Finding Joel,” she stopped long enough to tell you.

“What? But—”

“You killed the one guy that knew there was another door there, right?”

“Probably, but—”

“I’ve got to go. Before they come back.”

“Ellie, Joel wouldn’t—”

“Do you think I fucking care?”

You fell silent, heart thundering in your ears.

“I’m not leaving him.”

“Look,” you said in what you hoped was a soothing tone, “he’ll be able to find us if we stay put. If you go running around, you’re likely to get yourself killed, and you’ll miss him.”

“Just because you can’t handle being on your own out there doesn’t mean that I can’t. I’ve got both arms and I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Oh, not everything is? What a fucking surprise!”

“We don’t have time for this,” you snapped. You couldn’t tell if you were more angry than scared, or more scared than angry. Ellie just couldn’t leave. Someone would kill you if she left you, whether it was Joel or the zoners.

Ellie quickly shook her head and closed the distance between you. “You’re right. Here.” She held out your old pistol. You took it without thinking. “Maybe if they show up, the adrenaline will be enough to get your aim straight.” Ellie had made it halfway across the room again before she added, “Remember: They can hear you. You might want to keep your fucking trap shut.”

And she left.

“Ellie!” you shouted after her, but no answer came echoing back to you.

For a moment, you felt blind with panic, capable only of staring numbly at the gun in your hands. Then you heard something slam in the not-quite-distance, in the opposite direction from where Ellie had gone. Before anything else could reach your ears, you dove behind the bar with the scanners. Just as you ducked behind the chipped counter, someone pounded on the door. You held your breath as the shattered remains in the cabinet jittered across its shelves. Once, twice, three times—the cabinet started to grind across the floor.

With an almighty smash, the door finally crashed open wide enough for two more men to shove their way into their room.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one crooned.

“We heard you calling your little friend. We know you’re in here,” sang the other.

The sound of someone kicking over a long-dead potted plant filled the room. “You killed Jeffery, you little bitch. Might as well surrender to your fate.”

Before he could finish his sentence, you popped up and let off a single shot. You didn’t stick around to see if it met its mark, but it became pretty clear that it hadn’t when they started to scream at you and fire their own weapons. You stood again and fired, your hand shaking widely around your gun as you did. After the third round, you must have made a lucky shot. One of them spluttered and choked. You heard the distinct sound of a body hitting the floor.

Silence rang, but you knew it would be temporary. The horrible grinding sound of someone unable to breathe continued quietly, and then whoever was left shrieked.

“Oh, you’re fucking dead now, bitch! You think you can just waltz in here, into our turf, steal our things, kill our men, and get away? I don’t fucking think so!”

Your breath was wild in your chest. You lifted yourself up momentarily, but when you pulled the trigger, all your gun did was click. It had no more bullets. You had no further way to defend yourself.

He knew. He laughed. His footsteps echoed against the walls as he walked leisurely toward your hiding space.

“You’re gonna pay, bitch. You and your two friends. Don’t know where that man of yours went, but we’ll find him. That girl won’t make it of the building. And you? You just made sure none of you are getting an easy death.”

You dropped the gun, too tired to hold it up anymore. At last, your attacker appeared. He had a wide grin full of chipped teeth.

“There you are,” he whispered.

As he advanced, your hands scrabbled through the debris surrounding you, like a moment out of one of your well-worn nightmares. He drew closer, knelt—and that was just when your fingers found a plank of wood. You lifted it into the air without thinking and swung the object hard into his head. Again, you were lucky. Several nails had been drilled into the side of the wood, and you just happened to have sent them into the man’s skull.

“What the fuck?” he said, and lifted own gun.

You ripped your weapon out before he could fire. He dropped. That wasn’t enough. You were alone. You didn’t want him telling his compatriots anything. Again, you lifted the plank and drove it, nails first, into the back of his neck. He continued to twitch. You continued to beat him in more and more places. He fell still, but that still wasn’t enough either. You knew what torture meant for women, and you’d be damned even more if you let that happen to you.

“Holy fucking shit!”

You looked up. Ellie had returned with Joel in tow. Both of them stared at you, for how long, you couldn’t say.