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When Tommy’s first told that Marlene has a special assignment for him, there’s a very young and very stupid part of him that’s excited. He doesn’t think he’s too arrogant, doesn’t think pride is one of his greatest weaknesses, but he can’t deny that his abilities far exceed the work he’s been given so far. He’s put in his time with the Fireflies thus far with the understanding that they’re getting a feel for him, but he’s begun to itch for more. He didn’t sever his connection to the last family he has left just to do the same shit he was already doing: beating people up, running supplies, all of the hard labor that an organization needs to stay afloat but nothing that feels especially important.
Hearing, then, that Marlene herself has picked him for a new responsibility feels like a recognition of his talent, his potential.
Feels like the broken splinters of his relationship with Joel might one day be smoothed over enough that they no longer stab at him every goddamn day.
*
He follows the Firefly sent to collect him through a series of twisting alleys until they reach what used to be an old mall, right at the edge of the QZ. Getting inside requires a series of turns to get to a nearly-hidden door, which he discovers only when he’s close has been purposefully covered in vines to disguise it.
The subterfuge only makes him more certain that he’s being set up for something great.
Growing more excited by the moment, imagining what great blow he’s going to strike against FEDRA, he’s a little distracted when he’s finally taken to what must be Marlene’s main office to judge by the maps and plans tacked up on the walls, the space showing signs of previously having been a mall security office. Having not gathered himself quite yet, he’s still getting his words together when he notices it’s not just Marlene in the room.
There’s a little girl on the floor with a set of small plastic dinosaurs, too.
“Hi,” the little girl says, darting right up to him and wrapping an arm around his leg as she leans against him, studying him with the same intensity Marlene did when he first joined.
He looks up to Marlene, utterly wrongfooted.
“Uh,” he says intelligently, but the little girl speaks then, turning to Marlene.
“Yep,” she chirps. “He’s good.”
He’s beyond confused as the kid grabs his hand and then starts to pull him away, but Marlene just looks amused.
“Ellie,” she says, a gentler version of her usual command but no less firm. “You can’t just drag him away. I need to talk to him first.”
The little girl–Ellie–rolls her eyes in a gesture that looks far too old to be coming from such a small child, but she releases him, though she tugs on his shirt when he looks back to Marlene, partially sure he’s having a stroke.
“Come play with me after, okay?” She asks with the same sense of command Marlene speaks in.
Before he can say anything at all in response to that, she’s scampering off around the corner.
He looks back to Marlene, begging for her to make some kind of sense out of this. Marlene smiles a little wryly–a smile that looks a little tired at the same time–and gestures for him to sit. On slightly halting legs, he does.
“That’s Ellie,” Marlene says, unnecessarily. “And she’s your new assignment.”
“Excuse me?” He says at once, sure this is a prank. He’s just being hazed, surely. He’s not being assigned as a goddamn babysitter. That would be worse than smuggling chicken, which at least carries the benefit of first dibs on the goods. “You can’t be fucking serious.”
“Ellie is always assigned to a handler,” Marlene says patiently. “She’s a handful, so it’s not like you’ll be getting off easy. She’s one of the harder responsibilities around here.”
He can only gape at her. Marlene seems faintly amused by this before her expression hardens.
“There was…an incident,” she says carefully, “with the man who was supposed to be her last handler. He was far too fucking eager for the job, and looking through his bag before I assigned him to it after her last one died turned up some pictures as to why that might be.” A hard flash of what can only be called disgust in her eyes. “He was handled appropriately.”
He doesn’t need to ask exactly what that means.
“So,” she says, face clearing, “now the job is up for grabs again.”
“Why me?” He has to ask, and Marlene tilts her head in acknowledgment.
“Ellie is very important to me,” she says, the last words coming after a pause and seeming to come only with effort. “I can’t focus on what I need to do if I have to worry about her safety. I’ve seen you in action. You’re one of the best fighters we’ve got, and you’re probably the best with a gun currently in this city.”
He gets the feeling this is meant to butter him up. He tries to resist falling for it.
“There’s plenty of other people who can do the same,” he says. “Women, even.”
“Are you trying to imply only women should be responsible for children?” She asks with a lift of a brow.
“No!” He hastens to respond. “I just-” He only then registers the slight smirk that says he’s being fucked with. He can feel his face heat.
“Do you remember a woman named Christa?” Marlene asks, and he blinks at the non-sequitur.
He digs through his memories, trying to make the name mean something. He has only the vaguest association, but he speaks anyway.
“Tall, red hair, butterfly tattoo near her elbow?” He says, everything he remembers of a Firefly woman he’d met only once after far too much drinking with the group he was assigned to at the time.
“That’s the one,” she says. “You remember a woman named Rachel?”
“Is there a point to this?” He asks, uninterested in playing Who’s Who with random Fireflies when he still doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here being assigned a kid to look after.
“Over the past month, you’ve been around three drunk women: Christa, Rachel, and Marguerite. With all three of them, they’ve made passes at you, and you’ve had the opportunity to take full advantage of a drunk woman to do what you want with her.”
He bristles at once.
“I would never-” He starts hotly, but Marlene shakes her head.
“I’m not accusing you,” she says. “They were tests. None of them were actually drunk. I just wanted to see what you would do if you had the chance with an incapacitated woman.”
“Are you fucking serious,” he says, the question coming out as a statement instead.
Marlene tilts her head in acknowledgement.
“There were bad men Before, and they haven’t gotten better now. If I’m trusting a little girl to someone’s care, I need to know they aren’t a fucking predator.”
“So you’ve been what?” He asks. “Testing my character?”
“Exactly,” Marlene says. “And each time, you turned all three of them down, got them back to their quarters, and even made sure they had water nearby.” A small smile. “What a gentleman.”
He doesn’t comment.
“Who’s the baby?” He asks. “Yours?”
Marlene snorts.
“She turned four last month, and does she look like mine?”
He shrugs.
“Genetics are weird sometimes.”
“Does it change your answer if she’s mine?” Marlene asks instead of actually answering.
“Am I gonna get kicked out if I say no?” He counters.
“Would that change your answer?”
He has a moment of missing Tess’s directness when she had something she wanted him to do.
“Look,” Marlene says, leaning forward. “You really don’t wanna do this, I’m not gonna chain you to her. I’ll find you something else to do. But I need someone I can trust as her handler. I need someone I can rely on. You do this, you prove you’re ready for more in the future.”
It’s bait. He knows it’s bait.
But goddamn is it tempting, one step forward to finally feeling like he’s doing something.
He looks after the direction the little girl left in, considering. He likes kids, always has. Not in the way Joel always did in wanting to hold them and parent them and be a dad at them even when he was a kid, too, but Tommy enjoys them. They’re funny and honest and down for anything.
He had been thrilled when Sarah was born at the idea of having a built-in little sidekick.
The thought of his niece sends a pang through him the way it has for almost a decade.
Sarah had counted on him. Sarah had needed him to keep her safe.
And he’d been too fucking slow.
It’s not redemption, this Ellie kid. There’s nothing in the world that could make up for Sarah, and he knows it, carries it like a weight every day.
But he thinks he could keep this one safe, could get a leg up in the Fireflies and prove something to himself at the same time.
“Okay,” he hears himself say. “I’ll do it.”
*
He plays with Ellie–meaning more, in this case, that Ellie hands him one of her few toys and then immediately tells him how he’s doing it wrong–until a chime from a speaker makes her perk up. She tidies up immediately, and it makes him sad, somehow, the efficiency of it. A child this young shouldn’t be independent enough to clean up alone at a signal from a chime. Still, his job isn’t to comment on her welfare; it’s just to…Well.
He’s still working that part out.
“C’mon,” Ellie says, tugging him up. “We gotta hurry!”
He can’t help but laugh as she grabs a fistful of his jeans and does her best to tow him along in her wake, seeming frustrated that he doesn’t seem to be in the same rush.
“What’s the hurry?” He asks, almost tripping over her as she turns and pulls at him with both hands, regardless of the woman they nearly mow down rounding a corner. He gives the woman an apologetic glance, and she shakes her head fondly at Ellie, pausing to step out of the way.
“That’s my food sound!” She says, and it kills his amusement, a sentence like that. “We gotta hurry! Sometimes it’s pasghetti.”
“Meaning,” their near-casualty says, “that it was spaghetti exactly twice when we raided a FEDRA store almost a year ago, and the bug holds out hope of a repeat.” She reaches out to tap Ellie’s chin. “Give up the ghost, buggy girl. It ain’t happening again.”
“Sometimes it’s pasghetti,” Ellie stays sternly, looking to the woman. “Bye bye, Nina,” she says pointedly. This is a clear dismissal, and Nina snorts, turning to him.
“It’s not spaghetti-”
“Sometimes!” Ellie puts in, returning to trying her best to tug him away.
“-so there’s no rush, trust me.” She holds her hand out. “I’m Nina.”
“Tommy,” he says, putting a hand on Ellie’s head at a thin, frustrated whine when he doesn’t fall into motion again.
“Oh, I know,” Nina says with a sly sort of smile. “Everyone who knows about the bug knows about you now.”
“Tommyyyyyyy,” Ellie whines through her teeth, nearly bowed backwards with her efforts at moving him along. “Pasghetti!”
“The bug?” He asks Nina, ignoring his charge’s irritation. She’s clearly been told not to leave her handler, so he luckily doesn’t have to worry about her straying without him.
If only a young Sarah had been trained the same way, he thinks wryly, remembering the heart attack he had when she slipped away from him in stores to try to do the shopping all on her own.
“That’s what we call our buggy girl here,” Nina says with affection, poking Ellie’s nose and ignoring the way Ellie snaps her teeth at her in response in clear threat. Nina looks back to him. “Better not to have her name getting out if we can help it. We needed a nickname for her when she came here and,” she shrugs, “fireflies are bugs. Might as well call our littlest one the same.”
“Tommy,” Ellie groans again, making him stagger when she switches tactics and shoves at the back of his legs, catching him at the knee and almost sending him down on top of her. “Pasghetti!”
Nina snorts.
“Better listen to the bug,” Nina says. “She gets chompy when she’s hungry.”
“Bye bye, Nina,” Ellie says again, even more pointedly. “Funk off.”
Nina takes her (rude) dismissal with a little salute to Ellie and a wink to him, and he finally lets Ellie push him back into motion.
*
“It’s not pasghetti,” Ellie says forlornly when he picks her up to look into the vat of what looks like some kind of meat sludge. She sighs heavily.
“Tough luck,” he says sympathetically, resting her on one hip and handing her an empty bowl before taking one for himself. “Maybe next time.”
This seems to buck her up a little bit, and she holds her bowl out for the nonplussed volunteer spooning out food, a scoop of what looks like mashed potatoes and then two scoops of the meat sludge.
“Thank you,” he says before he jostles Ellie a bit in a hint.
She stares at him blankly.
“Say thank you,” he says under his breath, and she frowns.
“Thank you?” She says to him, and he jerks his head to the volunteer, who already seems over this interaction, looking at the small line forming behind them pointedly, two men and a woman, all three of whom look deeply uninterested in him continuing this lesson.
Still. If he had to learn manners, he might as well torture a future generation with them.
“Thank you?” Ellie says to the volunteer, still clearly confused as to why this is being asked of her.
The volunteer just grunts and gestures for them to move on. He looks around for a table and is surprised to see so much space open. He carries Ellie over to one in a corner and puts her down. He frowns at the way she has to kneel on the bench because she’s too little to reach if she sits and looks around for something to use as a booster seat. The dining hall in this installation, though, is sparse enough that they’re down to two pots to cook everything in. There’s definitely nothing to sit a small 4 year old on so she can eat in a relatively comfortable position.
She makes a soft noise of protest and holds onto her bowl with both hands when he sits down next to her and picks her up, but she settles when he sits her on one thigh, boosting her up enough that she’ll be able to eat while sitting. She tips her head back.
“Whatcha doing?” She asks, sounding genuinely curious.
“Didn’t wantcha having to kneel like that the whole time,” he tells her. “You alright with that?”
Ellie wiggles a bit, like she’s deciding. When she settles, she tips her head back and smiles at him.
“Yeah.”
*
“So does everybody have a food sound here?” He asks, wondering if that’s something someone’s forgotten to tell him. He’s never been to this section of the installation, after all. Maybe it’s something the higher ups do.
“Nuh uh,” Ellie says around a full mouth of potatoes and meat slop. The slop still doesn’t look very appetizing even in a bowl, but he’s a man who’s lived on army food and FEDRA ration blocks. It might as well be fine dining, comparatively. “Just me.”
“Why’s that?” He asks, genuinely curious.
“Cause I’m a secret,” Ellie says with a shrug.
He frowns at that.
“Whattya mean?”
Ellie shrugs again and stuffs her mouth once more, cheeks puffing out like a hamster’s.
“Marlene says bad people wanna kill me,” she says around her full mouth. “Like the FEDRA people. Cause they don’t like Marlene. So I gotta be secret or they’ll make me be dead.”
Jesus, what a thing to hear from such a small child.
He looks around at the dining hall, still nowhere near busy.
“So…your sound goes off when it’s not crowded?”
“Uh huh,” Ellie says, scraping at the bottom of her bowl. “Some people can know about me, but lotsa people can’t. So my sound goes off when it’s time for food, and then I come get food, and then I go hide again.”
It sounds…like an incredibly limited life for a kid.
“Do you get to go outside?” He asks, hoping she has some kind of variety from her room and a near-empty dining hall.
“When Marlene says so,” she says simply.
“Do you get to go on walks anywhere?”
“When Marlene says so.”
“Do you get to look around?”
“When Marlene says so.”
He’s catching onto a pattern here.
“Do you get to play with any kids?” He asks, though he can’t see when she would have the chance. He’s never seen a Firefly kid before her, after all. If any of the Fireflies have children, they keep them well away. Even if they won’t commit it to paper or announcements, FEDRA’s big on “ripping out the roots of rebellion.” More than one family’s been annihilated in a single night through from one member being caught as a Firefly, or at least suspected of being one.
When Ellie answers, her voice is quiet, and she pulls her shoulders in like she’s self-conscious.
“No.”
*
In the days that follow, they fall into a sort of routine, him and Ellie.
He wakes up, dresses, and goes to her room. She’s always awake and already dressed by one of Marlene’s closer underlings. Whoever was on Ellie Morning Duty leaves her with him after that, and they pass the time going through workbooks or playing with one of her toys or looking at some of her books. She doesn’t have many of any of them–a hazard of having to move quickly in case of danger, he supposes–but she doesn’t complain. They wait until they hear her food sound, and then he carries her to the dining hall where they eat in the nearly-empty room. He finds out after day 2 that the evening meal is the only time they reliably have access to full helpings of everything, both of them called down before everyone else is told it’s ready. Breakfast and lunch get served to the others in this installment first, and they end up with whatever’s left. Ellie doesn’t comment, clearly used to this, but he finds himself wondering, sometimes, if it’s good for her, getting odds and ends like this. Depending on which food volunteer they have, they might have a bit extra that was saved specifically for them, but some of the volunteers seem almost resentful of their presence, and there’s more than one meal he ends up far less than full from.
Ellie seems to notice him looking at their plates with disapproval one day and pipes up from where she’s sitting on him, their usual arrangement since there’s still nothing to use as a booster seat.
“Brent doesn’t like me,” she says matter-of-factly, and he looks to her.
“What’s that?”
“Brent,” she says, pointing to the food volunteer hauling one of the pots into their kitchen area before he grabs her hand in his and lowers it. “He doesn’t like me. That’s why we have to be hungry today.”
She doesn’t sound upset or surprised about this, which is almost worse.
“What’d you do to him?” He asks, subtly scraping an extra bit of gristly chicken onto her plate when she isn’t looking. He’s not the one still growing bones and adult teeth, after all.
Ellie shrugs, picking up her roll and ripping it in two, stuffing almost an entire half into her mouth.
“I told him his nose looks like a potato,” she says. “Because it does.” There’s a bit of heat to this that tells him she’s had an argument about this before. “And now he doesn’t like me.”
He hides a smile with a bite of his own roll.
“Yeah, probably a good bet not to say sh-stuff like that to people,” he advises, and Ellie tips her head up to look at him, frowning.
“Why?” She asks around a full mouth.
He tips her head back down before she chokes.
“It’s rude,” he tells her. “And kinda mean.”
“But it does look like a potato,” she says, clearly confused. “Potatoes are cool.” She very clearly meant it as a compliment, and he doesn’t know exactly how to explain to her that it certainly wasn’t taken that way.
“Tell ya what,” he says. “You wanna give somebody a compliment, why don’t you tell me what it is first? Then I can let you know if they’ll think it’s rude or not.” It’ll also hopefully keep them from more skimpy meals from hurt feelings among the food volunteers.
Ellie ponders this, gnawing on her roll. They’ve gotten ones that seem stale far beyond a single day, and if he’s having trouble with his, he can’t imagine that her little teeth are having an easy go of it.
“Okay,” she says at last.
And that’s that.
*
He jumps the first time Ellie slips her hand into his, so little that it barely fills his palm. She looks up to him with wary interest when he doesn’t immediately hold hers back, and it’s the muted hope in her face that makes his fingers close even before he’s decided he’s going to. Ellie smiles when he does and swings their joined arms with clear happiness.
It becomes routine after that, holding Ellie’s hand on their few walks. Sure enough, Ellie’s not allowed out into the greater part of the compound unless they get direct clearance from Marlene, and Marlene is rarely there to give it, at least during the hours Ellie’s awake. He chafes at the lack of movement and change of scenery, so he knows it must be worse for a kid who’s had to live like this for years.
Ellie, though, seems well-accustomed to making the best of an extremely limited existence.
“-and then the ale-ins would come down and go pew pew pew pew,” this is said with a brief release of his hand to do double finger guns, her grin broad and bright. “And then all the humans would go-” He puts a hand over her mouth just in time when he realizes she’s drawing in a breath for a demonstrative scream.
“No loud noise, remember?” He asks, and he sees the flicker of disappointment in her eyes and hates himself a bit for it, for making a naturally exuberant child be quiet when it’s clearly not in her nature.
Still, orders are orders.
“And then the humans would what?” He prompts when he’s sure Ellie won’t scream in demonstration of her story. She can’t be loud, but she gets so little time to just be a kid that he hates reining her in.
Ellie, though, just looks down and kicks at the floor even as she puts her hand back in his.
“Nevermind,” she says, looking down.
No matter his coaxing, she doesn’t talk for the rest of their walk.
*
“Are you serious?” He asks, half-laughing, as a stone-faced man named Tray walks him through what he’s been told is a Vitamin D lamp for Ellie.
Tray doesn’t laugh.
“She isn’t allowed outside when it’s light out,” he says, near-monotone. He lifts the lamp. “An hour four times a week,” repeating his instructions from before.
He takes the lamp only when it’s shoved at him.
“Hey!” He calls after Tray, already leaving. “Level with me: are you serious, or are you fucking with me?”
Tray doesn’t even bother fully turning.
“You wanna risk her getting rickets, that’s up to you,” he says, sounding completely unconcerned. “Otherwise: an hour four times a week.”
He leaves without another word.
*
His doubt about the sunlamp is proven false with Ellie’s response when she returns from her bath. She sighs heavily when she sees it but drags a thick blanket over and lays down, starfishing on the floor and looking like she’s waiting for execution. She lifts a hand like a little princess in a gesture for him to come closer. She breaks and giggles when he rests a foot on her belly and pretends to squish her, balling up around his foot and hanging off of his ankle.
“No squishing!” She declares, grinning broadly and giggling when he lifts his leg to try and shake her off.
“Gonna squish you, buggy girl, if you don’t let go.”
Ellie just holds on tighter.
*
After negotiating the release of his foot, he plugs in Ellie’s lamp and sets it up. Well, he tries to. She watches him figure out how to work the dials on her belly with her head propped in her hands, and she laughs when he flips her like a pancake when he finally gets the damn thing on.
“Gotta bake you evenly,” he tells her, tugging her under the lamp’s light. He pats her belly like a bongo, and she laughs, trying to slap his stomach in return and missing. “Apparently you gotta cook for an hour.”
“I’m not cooking!” She says, but she’s grinning as she says it. “It’s my vampire lamp.”
“That so?” He asks, lowering himself to the floor and stretching his legs out. The warmth of the lamp is nice, and he would appreciate a good nap if Ellie conks out first. The door’s already locked because they have new recruits meeting with Marlene today, after all.
“Uh huh,” Ellie says, and she sounds enthusiastic about this at least. “Kira says I gotta sit in the lamp so I don’t become a vampire.” Her eyes are wide with a small child’s excited terror at an idea. “‘Cause if you don’t see the sun, you become a vampire and then you eat people.” She sounds delighted with the idea.
“Been a while since I saw the sun,” he says in faux-thought, and Ellie wriggles with delight when she guesses where he’s going with this. “And you are looking mighty tasty-”
He moves before she can stop him, pretending to nibble the little hands that push at his face before he moves and gets her shirt up enough to blow a raspberry on the soft skin of her belly. Ellie shrieks as she struggles, delighted by the playfight, and he laughs and blows another raspberry when she gets one hand in his hair, tugging.
They both startle at pounding on the door, and he’s all but dropped Ellie and risen to handle the threat when Marlene’s voice rings out.
“You’re being far too loud,” she says, no amusement in her voice at hearing Ellie’s laugh. “I can hear you all the way in my office. The new recruits are here in less than five minutes. Not another sound out of this room.”
Immediately, Ellie deflates. She’s desperate for Marlene’s attention, for Marlene’s approval, and she wilts under even the slightest censure, especially from Marlene. He nudges her with a finger on her belly, trying to at least make her smile, but she just shrugs him off and returns to starfishing under her lamp, looking small and sad and disappointed in her artificial sunlight.
He bites his tongue against the urge to tell Marlene exactly where she can stick her noise police tendencies.
*
Nina lets him know during week 3 that being Ellie’s handler also means being a fucking narc.
“You can’t be serious,” he says, begging her to be making a bad joke.
Nina cringes, but she doesn’t take it back.
“It’s Marlene’s rule,” she says, sounding apologetic. “I didn’t make it.”
“And why in the hell would Marlene want me to take away the toys Ellie likes?”
“Blankets, too.”
He gives her a cutting look.
“Last year we had an evacuation, and Ellie almost got lost in the scramble because she had a stuffed toy she was attached to that she went back for. She could have died over a stuffed horse. I know it feels mean, but-”
“Yeah it feels mean picking out what toy a little kid likes most and taking it away,” he cuts her off, unwilling to entertain this idea. “It feels like being a fucking cartoon villain.”
“It’s for her own good,” Nina says, and he can tell she’s already bought and sold this lie to herself.
He doesn’t bother arguing.
*
When Marlene asks about it in a non-subtle hint that she thinks he’s failing at his job of making Ellie miserable and insecure about her toys, he talks it over with Ellie, asking which toy she likes the least. She’s clearly suspicious, clearly doesn’t trust where this is going, but she points to a Cabbage Patch Kid doll someone found in an old building a week ago and turned over.
“You mind if I give it to Marlene?” He asks, and Ellie’s confusion just deepens.
“Why?”
“Just trust me,” he tells her, and wonder of wonders, she does.
*
Marlene lifts an eyebrow when he turns over the doll, looking to him with clear doubt.
“She’s not a babydoll kid,” she says, looking back down to the doll’s smiling plastic face.
He shrugs, slipping his hands into his pockets and trying to look as casual as possible.
“She’s been pretending it’s a sacrifice to a dinosaur god she saved from certain death,” he tells her, which isn’t a total lie. She has been pretending the doll is a sacrifice to Lord Steve The T-Rex.
It’s just been a sacrifice she’s been offering.
“She likes playing hero,” he reminds her, though he doubts she knows even that much. Knowing how much the kid likes pretending to be Super Ellie would require talking to her for more than five minutes at a time more often than maybe once every four days. He might respect what Marlene’s done with the Fireflies, what she’s trying to do for the whole country, but he’s increasingly irritated by what she does with Ellie.
Still, right now the distance is convenient.
“Huh,” Marlene says thoughtfully. “Little weirdo.”
He tries desperately to convince himself there’s something almost like warmth in her voice, even though she really just sounds idly interested the way the other Fireflies who know about Ellie are.
“Alright then,” she says, picking up the doll and tossing it into a box in the corner. “I’ll see if anyone finds anything else to pass along.”
And that’s that.
He walks out feeling wildly victorious at his deception.
*
It’s hard to hold onto his sense of purpose as a Firefly when he spends so much of his time as a combination playmate/climbing structure. He likes Ellie, finds her a delight in fact, but this is not what he signed up for when he burned the last bridge he had with Joel and fucked off to join the Fireflies. For all of Marlene’s platitudes about keeping Ellie safe so she can focus on the larger mission, it’s hard to feel like much of a rebel when he spends his days playing nanny.
And then comes the day he actually becomes important.
He scoops Ellie up at the first sound of gunfire. She jumps, startled, and he can feel her heartbeat increase beneath the fragile cage of her ribs, fluttering like a hummingbird’s against his palm. He shifts her to one hip, reaching for his gun on the other. He doesn’t draw, not yet, but he’s ready to. Ellie flinches at another round of gunfire, but he holds his ground. No sense in running if he doesn’t know where to run to.
“You’re alright, buggy girl,” he tells her absently, the nickname something he’s already picked up from hearing it over and over. “I’ve gotcha. Ain’t nothing gonna getcha.”
Not while he’s alive, at least.
She reaches to her pocket and pulls out her knife, but he stops her before she flicks it open. The last thing either of them needs is her stabbing one or both of them in a panic. She heeds him, but she keeps it in her hand, clearly ready to use it at the slightest provocation. She might actually be good at it, he thinks through the adrenaline surge of imminent danger. She gets defense training twice a week with a trainer named Brenda, and though it’s supposed to mean a break for him, he usually ends up sitting in on them so he can work on the techniques with her later, both for practice and for something to do.
Right now, though, he’d rather not put a 4 year old’s safety in her own hands.
“Do I gotta go in my trunk?” She asks in a low voice, and he can hear how much she doesn’t want to.
He glances over at the trunk in question. It’s something he’s drilled with her before at Marlene’s suggestion (demand). It’s the last line of defense for Ellie, this supposedly bulletproof trunk. If shit really hits the fan, she’s supposed to go inside and get locked in. She has a radio and a little battery-operated light, but he still feels a little sick at the idea of it, locking a kid away in a box. He’s painfully aware that the entire group of them getting killed could mean her starving to death locked away and unable to get out, but he’s been told more than once that it’s the safest option while they get rid of any invaders. The radio is supposed to be a guarantee that she can call to get out.
Still, he can’t help but think, it won’t do her any good if there’s no one to call.
Another round of gunfire, this time sounding closer.
He considers his options. There’s still time to flee. He knows his way around the building pretty well by now, and Ellie might know it even better than him. He could grab her and run, get her to another Firefly hideout. They could figure it out from there.
But that also could mean carrying Ellie into gunfire, and the last time a little girl he cared about was in the line of fire-
“Just for a little bit, okay?” He tells her.
She clings onto him for a moment, seeming unable to help it, but she finally lets go and allows him to lay her down in the trunk. He hates it more than he has all the weeks previously that he has no special toy or blanket to offer her, some comfort item she could curl up with. She seems small and lonely in the box, and he hasn’t even shut it yet.
First thing he’s gonna do if he lives through whatever this altercation is, he decides, he’s gonna get the girl a goddamn blankie.
*
Ellie’s a brave girl about being locked in her trunk, but he’s painfully aware of the dependance she has on him as he loops the key on its chain around his neck and slowly creeps out into the hallway after a last pat of reassurance to the trunk.
Then he switches into the mindset that’s made him one of the deadliest smugglers in the Boston QZ.
*
In the end, it’s not a raid. He learns the Fireflies caught a few FEDRA guards they’d been interrogating, and one of them managed to pick the lock on their holding cell and get a gun, letting them turn the tables.
At least, he thinks–knowing it’s a little arrogant–until he joined the fray.
In the end, he only uses two bullets.
The others are dispatched easily enough with a knife and a few seconds of them being just slightly too slow.
He waits only for a nod of approval from Marlene before he goes back to Ellie.
*
He catches himself at the last moment before he returns to the kid looking like a crime scene, and he stops by one of the bathrooms to rinse himself off, looking at the stain on the collar of his shirt with distaste. He jogs to his quarters and changes quickly, returning to the bathroom to let his shirt soak.
If the previous decade taught him nothing else, after all, it’s how to get blood out of his clothes.
*
He opens the trunk-
-and immediately almost gets stabbed in the eye.
“Hey now,” he says, on his ass from jerking back. “Watch it with the stabbing.”
It takes Ellie a moment to realize it’s him, and he waits her out, hands out in placation.
“You’re alright, Ellie girl,” he tells her, voice low and gentle. “Just me, kiddo.”
Ellie exhales a heavy breath and bows forward over the edge of her trunk, hand with the knife going slack. Eyeing how close it is to one baby-soft cheek, he whistles to get her attention and then gently moves to take it from her. She releases it after one gentle tug and then lifts her arms to be picked up. He flips her knife shut and puts it in his pocket, granting the silent request.
“That was scary,” she tells him, looping her arms around his neck. “They got close.”
They didn’t, not really. They were still several halls away from here when they were stopped.
Still, he’s not going to tell a 4 year old she was overreacting to the sound of gunfire coming towards her.
“They’re gone now,” he tells her, patting her back gently. “Everything’s alright now.”
He lets her hold on until she’s ready to let go.
*
True to the promise he made to himself during the FEDRA escape, he decides to help Ellie keep something she can comfort herself with.
The attempt, for all of its intended kindness, starts off roughly.
“You know your blue blanket-” He starts, but Ellie cuts him off.
“I don’t like it,” she says in a rush, and he can hear the desperation in it. She’s started getting attached to that blanket, he knows, always rubs her cheek against it when she falls asleep, and this response tells him very clearly that she knows what’s supposed to come next. It makes him angry even as it makes him ache for her, this 4 year old so desperate to prove she doesn’t care so it won’t get taken. “It’s funking stinky. I hate it.”
The way one little hand is fisted in the fabric before she realizes she’s doing it and lets go calls her lie. He sits down next to her on her bed and reaches out to brush her hair back for her where it’s falling out of her ponytail and into her face. All of the people who know about Ellie’s existence have been pressed into service using the information they got out of the FEDRA captives, so he’s been stepping up to cover more Ellie Tasks.
Including brushing her hair and putting it up, something that Joel always made look very easy that turns out to be pretty fucking hard.
“Can you keep a secret?” He asks, trying to distract her from her nerves by sounding enthusiastic.
Ellie shifts a bit, still eyeing him warily.
“I’m a secret,” she says.
“That you are, buggy girl,” he says, huffing a bit when her hair falls back into her face. He picks her up to turn her away from him so he can give her ponytail number three of the day, which looks about as crooked and sad as the first two. “What would you say to having another secret between just you and me?”
Ellie holds still as he tries to finger comb her hair back, even when he tugs at it, still clumsy. She’s not whiner, he knows. One of her morning minders is a woman named Lily who has absolutely zero patience for helping out with a kid she clearly doesn’t like being here, and he’s stepped in before when watching her rip a brush through Ellie’s hair, nearly daring the kid to cry about it, clearly impatient to get it done so she can go about her day.
He doesn’t care for Lily.
“A big secret?” She asks, and he can tell she’s excited at the prospect of being involved in something.
“Kinda,” he says, finishing his work and trying to convince himself that it looks better than her own attempts at it. (He doesn’t succeed at the lie, but Ellie turns around and looks up at him, big eyes hopeful.) “I was thinking about that blanket of yours-”
A little flicker of fear on Ellie’s face before she covers it as best a 4 year old can.
“-and how we might be able to hide it.”
Ellie blinks and then tilts her head a bit like a puppy.
“Hide it?” She repeats, looking briefly to her blanket.
“Yeah,” he says, pushing her bangs back where they’re already falling, tucking them behind one little ear. He tilts his head to her trunk. “What say you to keeping your blanket in your trunk during the day? Anybody asks, it’s just in there for cushion. Nobody needs to know.”
Ellie considers this, chewing the inside of her cheek.
“Marlene wouldn’t like it,” she says softly, but he can tell she’s tempted.
“Well,” he says, “what if I tell you it’s okay?”
She looks to him, conflicted.
“Marlene’s the boss,” she says, but she looks back to her trunk, stroking her little fingers across her blanket.
“Yeah,” he agrees, “but bosses don’t make rules about everything all the time.”
“They don’t?” Ellie asks, clearly surprised.
“Nope,” he says. “Bosses handle the big stuff, but there used to be something called managers who handled the littler stuff.”
Ellie mouths the word ‘manager’ like she’s trying it out and then looks between the trunk and him.
“Are you…my manager?” She asks, clearly trying to work it out, and he resists the urge to smile.
“Kinda,” he says. “And as your manager, I say you can keep your blanket.”
“You promise?” She asks, eyes lighting up with hope.
He smiles and squishes her cheek affectionately.
“Sure do.”
She launches herself at him in a hug so powerful it nearly knocks him backwards.
*
Their blanket ploy works perfectly. He’d been a little worried Ellie would let the hustle slip, but apparently being a secret herself means she’s well-accustomed to selectively sharing information. He takes over more of her routine as things get busy with a new FEDRA crackdown on some supply points, which makes it even easier to hide. He puts Ellie to bed at night with her blanket and wakes her up in the morning to fold it up and hide it in her trunk while she gets dressed.
It’s little enough, a single comfort blanket against everything he can’t give her, one tiny touchpoint of normalcy for a little kid who’s living in the deeply weird limbo of being fiercely protected and wildly neglected at the same time.
But still, it feels like something.
*
On quiet days Marlene gives her approval, he’s allowed to take Ellie out to what used to be an enclosed courtyard, sunlight streaming in through glass so grimy it means sitting in semi-darkness except for the cracks where water leaks in when it rains.
Still, to judge from how she spends a good five minutes running in a circle laughing each time they visit it, it might as well be a jungle safari to Ellie. She always does the same routine, sprinting in circles and then “hiding” to pounce on him when he walks by. Her ability to hide is ruined by the fact that she can’t control her laughter, but he has a hard time not smiling as he pretends not to hear her, so he can’t cast stones too far about her abilities.
“Gee,” he says, pointedly facing the ruins of what used to be a potted plant that didn’t survive ten years of neglect as well as some of its compatriots. “Wonder where my buggy girl went.”
The group of overgrown elephant ears to his left wiggles with stifled laughter.
“Hope she didn’t-”
Ellie bursts out of the plants with a mighty battle cry, and he crouches enough to let her take him down in a tackle, careful to catch her head when she almost overbalances herself. She kneels on his chest when he’s down, pressing his arms down at the biceps, the farthest she can reach.
“I got you!” She says, grinning widely. “Now you’re my prisoner!”
He makes a show of fighting back, and her smile only gets wider as he lets her keep him pinned. He finally gives up with a groan, flopping backwards.
“Curse you, Super Ellie-”
“I’m Captain Ellie today!”
“Curse you, Captain Ellie! I have been defeated once again.”
He has to end the playfighting when she celebrates her victory by trying out her new choking tactic, rolling over and trapping her into a little ball instead. This used to be one of Sarah’s favorite things, getting squished like this, and it aches to remember it even as he’s pleased to find that Ellie’s the same way. He laughs at one little arm escaping to bat at him, but a fake bite to her fingers makes her squeal and retreat, giggling in the cage of his arms.
“No surrender!” Ellie still declares.
“You need to learn when to quit,” he tells her, amused.
“Never! Captain Ellie never gives up!” She declares, right back to wiggling for her freedom.
*
He only gets Ellie’s story two months after he became her minder, on a night one of Marlene’s direct underlings is a little too into her cups.
“Friend,” she slurs, hiccuping, “friend of Marlene’s.”
He nudges her cup a little farther away from her. He certainly has nothing against a good time, but the stress of being a Firefly and the near-promise of a gory death or a hanging means more drinking that he thinks is good for the functioning of a group, strictly speaking. Still, he takes another sip of his own cup, still half-full. Marlene’s back for once before Ellie’s gone to bed, so he has the night off, but annoyingly, he still doesn’t feel right getting wasted the way he knows he could with how strong this particular bootleg is. Ellie might need him.
God damn but responsibility is a bitch.
He thinks again of how Joel gave up his party days for parenthood. Then again, Joel was never one for parties anyway, far too happy chasing around a tiny soccer ball or securing a bow on a pigtail.
“-die-” Another hiccup from his drinking buddy. “Died after she got bitten. Had the baby and handed it over to Marlene. Told her to look after her.”
This makes more sense, at least, than Marlene randomly deciding to look after a child she found on the streets. The Fireflies routinely recruit teenagers–something he tries not to think about–but there’s no use for small children. Ellie’s a sentimentality he hasn’t been able to figure out.
Not until now, at least.
“And Marlene decided to keep her?” He prompts, when his informant is busy blearily blinking at the table. He has to repeat it before she seems to hear him.
“Not-not at first,” the woman slurs. “Tried to put her in an orphanage. Went to look in on her, though, and found-” She almost flings herself off her chair with a gesture of her hand before he catches her and pushes her upright again. “Found the poor little thing half-starved, diaper down to her knees, not even crying because she was too weak.”
It’s a sad thought even as it’s an enraging one, bright, mischievous Ellie a neglected infant in a government-managed crib.
“Took her back that day,” the woman says, illustrating the point with a slam of her palm to the table. “And now the bug’s our mascot.” This is said fondly, but with the same removal he sees in most of the Firefly adults in on the secret.
Most of the Fireflies who know about her enjoy Ellie, in the way they’d enjoy a puppy or a new movie. She’s a change from the norm, a little bubble of something that isn’t misery and struggle against what increasingly feels like an impossible goal, but he can’t help but notice that there’s no real connection. Part of this, he knows, is for Ellie’s security; Marlene doesn’t want too much about her getting out, so it’s better not to let them gain too much knowledge about her. The other part, though, is either a lack of time or true interest. They have things to do other than play pattycake or listen to an explanation about the artistic choices of a blob drawing, after all. They’ll pat her on the head and listen blankly for a few seconds at a time, but he’s seen Ellie’s dejection that no one really connects with her.
It’s one of the things that’s made it so dangerously easy for him to get attached to her.
*
Even knowing he doesn’t need to, even knowing he probably shouldn’t, he looks in on Ellie before he can settle for the night, finding her cuddled around one of her books, asleep but still on top of her sheets. He feels a flare of irrational annoyance at Marlene not making sure she was tucked in properly. Even from just babysitting Sarah over the years, he knows kids get cold easily. He crosses to the bed and attempts to settle Ellie without waking her up, but she stirs.
When her face turns, he sees tear tracks on her cheeks.
“Hey now,” he says, taking a seat on the side of her bed. “You got a case of the sads?”
It’s what Sarah used to say when she was little, that she had “the sads.” He and Joel had never figured out where she’d picked it up from, but she’d said it over and over, and with time, it had stuck around the way any family joke will.
He realizes in the moment, though, that it’s the first time he’s said it out loud since outbreak night. What their family’s experienced since that night far outweighs categorization as “the sads.”
“Marlene didn’t read with me,” Ellie reports, and he can hear how hurt she still is about it. “She had to do biz-niss.”
It’s stupid, to be mad at Marlene for this. She’s head of the entire Firefly operation in this part of the country. She has bigger things to do than sit down and read a storybook with a 4 year old.
But it’s not as if it would take that long, not as if it’s wildly unreasonable for her to take ten minutes to spend time with a kid who wants attention from her so badly it’s almost painful to watch.
“Well now,” he says, forcing his tone to come out cheerful as he gently shifts Ellie over in bed and picks up her book. “How about we work through it then, huh?”
Ellie snuggles in against his side in a gesture that feels so much like when a tiny Sarah did it that his vision blurs for a moment, painful memories made worse by the fact that he’s not entirely sober. When he’s got himself under control, he clears his throat, opening the battered book importantly.
“Alright now, munchkin, let’s see what Miss Bedelia is up to this time.”
*
He thinks his first order of business in the mythical future in which they’ve finally torn down FEDRA will be getting Ellie some spaghetti. She’s calmed down from yanking him to the dining hall–from his best guess, she seems to have some sort of superstition that a new handler means the spaghetti might come back, which is cuter than he’s prepared to deal with–but she always makes him lift her up to check what’s on the menu herself.
“No pasghetti,” she always reports like she’s delivering a terminal cancer diagnosis.
He’s tried to gently warn her about managing her expectations, but for a kid whose days all look exactly the same, it makes sense that she’d look forward to some kind of variety. The Fireflies manage to get a reliable supply of food–and better quality food than what he got when he wasn’t part of the top brass installment, he notes more than once–but ease of acquisition and preparation means repeats of the same things over and over.
Tonight he’s cutting up her baked chicken for her while she eats their collective apple slices when he looks up to a shadow and finds Brent standing over them. At once, he’s wary, shifting Ellie a bit to be easier to put down quickly if he needs to. He’s tried to be friendly with the man, but Brent seems the type of person determined to be an ass. He’s protective as fuck of resources and has a stick up his ass about allocation of those resources, down to the last grain of rice.
He’s also mentioned more than once that he doesn’t see the point in “wasting” Firefly resources on a child who contributes nothing, like there’s anything for a 4 year old to contribute, like that isn’t a bullshit expectation to have.
He feels Ellie press back against him. She’s not shy with the people who are allowed to know about her, but she’s well-aware of Brent’s hostility, even if she can’t fully understand the full scope of it. Sassy as she is, Brent makes her edgy, and he moves a hand to her side to squeeze gently for a moment in silent support.
“Something we can help you with?” He asks Brent, as friendly as he can manage. There’s no use starting shit if he doesn’t have to, after all.
Especially not with someone in charge of food.
“She needs to leave,” Brent says, jerking his chin to Ellie.
“My food noise said-” Ellie starts, trying to explain, but Brent’s patience breaks and he reaches out to yank her up.
He barely gets halfway there before Tommy’s on his feet and grabbing his wrist, spinning the man in place and knocking an ankle out from under him to get him down, following him down to pin him.
“You,” he says, very soft and very calm, “do not ever touch her.”
“Get the fu-” Brent starts to bellow, but he twists his arm more.
“Watch your language,” he tells him, a little harder.
“We got new recruits coming in,” Brent spits. “The brat needs to go back in her cage now.”
It would be an easy thing to break his arm. A little upward pressure and a little twist, and he could probably even manage a break in two places. It would be a nice little lesson on watching his goddamn mouth.
“Tommy,” he hears Ellie say, and then there are little hands on his arm, tugging at him. “C’mon. We gotta go back now.”
He turns just enough to look at her, and he finds her looking around nervously. He follows her line of sight to see another kitchen volunteer and three other Fireflies watching. Ellie tugs at him again.
“Tommy,” she says, beseeching now. “Marlene’s gonna be mad at me.”
That’s what finally makes him decide to let Brent go without a broken arm for his troubles. For his own part, he doesn’t give a fuck about the consequences of teaching a little lesson here, but Ellie worries enough about Marlene’s opinion without her making herself sick over Marlene being mad about a fight in the dining hall. He leans in to speak right into Brent’s ear.
“I ever catch you trying to put a hand on her again,” he says, friendly and conversational as he twists his arm enough to feel a creak in his bones, “and I will break your goddamn arm, you hear me?”
“Fine,” Brent spits, falling on his face when Tommy releases him and stands in one easy motion.
“C’mon, buggy girl,” he says to Ellie brightly. “Grab your plate. We’ll just have ourselves a little picnic.”
“Food stays in the dining hall,” Brent spits. “Otherwise we get rats.”
When Ellie hesitates at openly defying the rule, he grabs both of their plates.
“C’mon, Ellie,” he says, bumping her gently with his leg. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“Yeah,” she says with a tentative smile when Brent rises but doesn’t approach. “Funk pa-sicles,” she says brightly, very clearly not understanding what a popsicle is but game enough to play along.
He laughs all the way out of the room.
*
“Hey Tommy?” Ellie asks when he’s tucked her in for the night and read her her story. He doesn’t always leave her to fall asleep on her own, but he wants a word with Marlene if he can catch her about Brent’s fucking attitude. She hasn’t listened to his complaints before, but he’s nothing if he’s not persistent.
“Yeah, kiddo?” He asks, flicking on the nightlight Nina found for her a couple of weeks ago and turning off her lamp.
“Thanks.”
She sounds shy, and he turns with a bemused smile, moving to sit on the edge of her bed.
“Thanks for what, lil bit?” He asks, tugging her blue blanket–retrieved from her trunk for the night–up around her a little better. There’s a storm rolling in, and the temperature’s dropped sharply.
She shrugs, tucking her chin down.
He doesn’t push. Even if he doesn’t need the thanks, he can make some guesses about what it’s for. He leans forward and kisses the top of her head, the first time he’s ever done it. It feels right, and he decides he should do it more often. He pulls back and pokes Ellie’s nose.
“Ain’t gotta thank me for putting a punk in his place,” he says, squishing her face like a squeaky toy before he rises, just to make her laugh. “Now go to sleep before I feed you to the dust bunnies. They eat little girls who don’t go to bed, y’know.”
Her quiet giggles follow him all the way out.
*
“You can’t be serious,” he says flatly, staring at Marlene a week after he’d nearly broken Brent’s arm, as incredulous as he’d been on the day he’d been assigned as Ellie’s handler.
He feels as gobsmacked today, being told that he’s being “promoted” and taken away from her.
“You’ve shown great potential in-”
“Did I do something?” He demands, trying to work out what in the hell could have happened. He may not be on Joel’s level when it comes to taking care of a small child, but he’d like to think he did a pretty great job, all things considered.
Better than Marlene’s ever done, certainly.
“We need you elsewhere,” Marlene says calmly. “Your skills are-”
“Did Ellie ask me to leave?” He asks, knowing that the answer is no. Just last night, she’d told him he’s her best friend in the whole wide world.
It was as touching as it was absolutely fucking heartbreaking.
“She’s gotten attached,” Marlene says, like that’s supposed to mean fucking anything to him. She sees his blank look and sighs. “This is a dangerous job,” she says. “Even the best Fireflies don’t always make it. Her usual handlers usually last longer before it gets to this level. I have to make sure to switch them out so she doesn’t get overly attached in case something happens to them. It’s the kindest option here, a little bit of pain now to spare her losing someone when they’ve become really important to her later.”
He can only stare at her incredulously.
“Tommy, it’s-”
“It’s bullshit!” He cries, standing. He notes the two guards at the door stand to attention, ready for a fight, and he makes himself set back down, gritting his teeth. “That child,” he says, gesturing in the direction of Ellie’s room, “is the loneliest little girl I have ever met in my fucking life, Marlene. That’s not right. You’re isolating her, keeping her away from anyone who can love her like she needs.”
“She’s alive,” Marlene says calmly. “She’s alive, and she isn’t regularly crushed when her ‘friends’ end up dead. I know you think it’s cruel, but-”
“It is fucking cruel!” He says, barely restraining himself from rising and pacing once more. He glances to the side and notices that two more guards have joined the first two, clearly in response to his volume.
Grudgingly, he has to respect the sense of it.
It wouldn't be enough to stop him, but it might make the fight last a little longer.
“Tommy,” Marlene says, and there’s a gentleness to her tone that he hates immediately. She doesn’t mean it, whatever she’s going to say next. She’s just placating him. “Ellie is my responsibility. I’ve raised her since she was a baby, and I am doing what’s best for her.”
He lets out a harsh bark of a laugh.
“This is not what’s best for her,” he says flatly. “And you haven’t raised her, Marlene. You’ve offloaded her to a series of strangers and then ripped them away right when she feels comfortable.”
He remembers with sharp clarity how easily Ellie ran up to him on the first day, how desperately she wanted his attention, his companionship. He thinks of her now in her room all alone, waiting for him to hurry up and get back to her, and his chest aches with it.
“I’m not going,” he tells Marlene. “Demote me, punish me, do whatever you want. I’m not fucking leaving.”
Tess would advise him to be more circumspect, to hold his cards close to his chest, to try and find an advantage to press.
But Tess ain’t fucking here right now.
Marlene’s lips thin for a moment.
“You’re a great asset to this organization,” she says, and there’s no coaxing gentleness in her voice now. “With your help, we can accomplish truly great things. You’ve proven your loyalty, intelligence, and skill. We couldn’t ask for a better Firefly.”
“I’m sensing a but,” he snarks.
“But,” she says with a small tilt of her head in acknowledgement, “Ellie comes first to me. If you don’t leave by choice, I will have you removed by force.”
“Is that a threat?” He asks, tensing his muscles, ready for a fight.
Marlene meets his eyes without flinching.
“It’s a promise,” she says. “Your time with Ellie is over. You need to accept that and move on. You are one man in an entire building full of people who follow my orders. We need you out west. You can either follow orders and help us end FEDRA’s control, thus giving children just like Ellie an actual future, or you can push me right now, and I can have you removed anyway. There is no way this ends with you back with Ellie, Tommy. I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”
The rebel inside him wants to call her on it, wants to show her exactly what he’s capable of. They might get him in the end, it’s entirely possible, but he’d probably get a good half of them before that.
And then he’d die for no fucking reason at all.
It’s this that stays him. He’s not afraid of death, not really, but he hates the idea of dying without achieving anything. Even if he could reach Ellie, what then? He’s one man against a building of people. He’s good, but he’s not fucking superhuman. He could bide his time, could wait for watch shifts. There are times of day in which he probably could get in, kill everyone, and then take Ellie.
And then what? What comes next?
“You did a good job,” Marlene says, and her tone is kinder again. “But you have to let her go now. Ellie will be well taken care of, and you will be helping to fight back against FEDRA. With your help, we can build a world she can have an actual life in.”
He can, he knows. He has a purpose with the Fireflies. If he leaves, if he gives up on the belief that there can be a better world…
“Fine,” he throws between them.
He rises and leaves without another word.
*
He makes his move the night before he’s set to ship out. He hasn’t been allowed near Ellie to say goodbye with some bullshit about this being a clean break and something she’s used to–something that pisses him off more than anything yet–and the irritation of it fuels him to risk sneaking out, even knowing that it’ll absolutely look suspicious if he’s caught by another Firefly.
Even knowing that he’ll be executed if he’s caught by FEDRA.
Still. He needs to do this. He believes in the Fireflies, believes in what they’re setting out to do. Even if he doesn’t always approve of their methods–bombing near a FEDRA orphanage is something he’ll never condone–he knows the mission is ultimately the right course of action. The choices in this life are FEDRA or Fireflies, and FEDRA’s been in charge long enough. He wants to do his part to make a different sort of life possible.
But Ellie doesn’t need to keep living her stunted life to make that happen.
There’s no going back for her, not if he’s going to keep working with the Fireflies and help end FEDRA. If he’s lucky, he might get recalled one day and be able to bump into her. He might be able to explain that he didn’t choose to leave her. He might be able to apologize for letting them make him.
Or she might end up dead in a FEDRA raid or an insurrection within the Firefly ranks.
This thought pushes him just a little faster on his mission.
He’d hesitated over this a long while as he packed. Joel’s not the man he was before, after all. He’s an angry, bitter version of himself, a Joel that’s so fucking painful to look at that splitting off to join the Fireflies was a more attractive choice than staying with his brother. Joel does fucked up things these days, is violent and angry in a way he never was before.
But he knows to his bones that even in this new version of himself, Joel will never hurt Ellie. Even if Tess would allow it, it wouldn’t even occur to his brother. Ellie might not get the happy childhood Sarah did, but she’ll be safe and looked after.
Hell, she might even get to see the fucking sky now and then.
There’s no guarantee that Joel will take Ellie, he knows. If he asks his brother directly, he’ll get a fuck no and another argument about his life choices. In the first apartment they’d found in Boston, they’d had to move after a week because the neighbor had had a kid and Joel hadn’t been able to even look at her. He’s counting pretty heavily on the years (and Tess) to have smoothed down some of the sharp edges.
He’s also counting on Ellie’s own innate talent for being endearing.
He has what he knows is a stupid conviction in his heart that his brother will meet Ellie and at least be interested in her. If this whole thing goes how he thinks it’s going to, Joel’s going to come in guns blazing, ready for a prize. He’ll probably think it’s some form of apology, this. And in a way it is.
He’s just hoping a 4 year old will be a good enough “sorry I left you” to make sure he doesn’t just leave Ellie in the rubble of an old mall surrounded by corpses.
*
He leaves the note in one of their stashes, one of the ones he knows gets checked regularly. He folds the paper and then writes the coordinates of the mall headquarters coded in their specific system with a symbol to prove it’s him on the along with a rough map to Ellie’s room in the compound with an X marking the spot. He gives the note one last look over to try and see if he can make it any better, any more tempting for Joel to want to take the bait.
Being sent west to Wyoming. Left something behind at an outpost you'll want. - T
Short, sweet, and vague enough to have at least Tess intrigued.
C’mon big brother, he thinks with concentration at the note, like he can infuse it with intention if he just tries hard enough. Don’t you let me down here.
And then he turns around and goes back the way he came, hoping to God that it’ll be enough.
*
He’s barely made it to Wyoming before he hears chatter on the radio about an “asset” that’s gone missing, a bloodbath left behind in the main office in Boston when retrieving it. He’s eavesdropping on the radio conversation of the Firefly in charge of this deployment, a man named Dale, and he creeps closer silently, heart pounding with fear and hope both.
“-don’t know what it was,” comes the crackly voice over the radio. “I heard Marlene and someone called Nina talking about ‘the bug,’ whatever that means. Maybe some kind of weapon?”
His heart kicks up speed, beating impossibly faster.
“They have any idea where it went?” Dale asks.
“Smugglers,” comes the voice over the radio. “Those Joel and Tess people.”
His grin is so wide it hurts his face.
“Jesus,” Dale says with a low whistle. “Well, I hope it wasn’t too fucking important then. I certainly wouldn’t be going up against those fuckers. That’s a goddamn suicide mission.”
You got that fucking right, Tommy thinks with a pride he hasn’t felt in years.
“That seems to be the general consensus,” comes the voice over the radio. “Marlene and a few of her pet cronies seem upset, but nobody else wants to go up against them. Whatever it was, they can fucking keep it. We’ll just get another one.”
Good luck with that, Tommy thinks, barely suppressing a laugh.
*
There’s no guarantee that Joel and Tess will keep Ellie, of course. He tricked them into a kid they never asked for. But the only other option is dropping her off at an orphanage, and he has to hope there’s enough good left in his brother to prevent that. It’s a long shot, but still.
It’s a chance.
Good luck, buggy girl, he thinks as he falls asleep that night. I hope we meet again one day.