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The sun hasn't been up for an hour before the daylight sees Ellie pounding her fist on Joel and Tess' door. She knows it'll only be Tess in. She saw Jesse speaking to Tommy and Joel by the stables. They'll be out for hours, and Ellie imagines this conversation will only take minutes.

When the door doesn't immediately open, Ellie knocks louder and calls up towards the upstairs windows.

"Tess! Tess, get up!"

She doesn't give a fuck if it sounds like something's wrong because something is wrong. She's known it since they returned to Jackson. It's been eating at her, always in the back of her mind, and that last outing with Joel has lit a fire. She hasn't been sleeping. Last night, she couldn't manage more than a few minutes at a time before the conversation would replay in her mind, over and over and over.

Not so much the words, but the look in his eyes as he said them.

She's always been able to tell when Joel is lying to her even before she realized it.

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Tess is halfway out the shower when she hears thundering on the door, and she's shrugging herself into a t-shirt and sweats when Ellie starts hollering under the windows. She takes her time, t-shirt clinging to her still-damp skin. Things have been tense lately, and she's not immediately sure if it's an emergency or not –– surely if it was, Ellie would just use her damn house key.

But even if it's not an emergency, it's certainly not usual. So she makes her way down the stairs at a brisk pace, the steps creaking the whole way down. Joel's supposed to be redoing them soon, something about extra screws in the understructure, but their list of home reno projects is years long. She doesn't fuss about the order of them as long as she gets to keep her supervisory role.

She opens the door and immediately stands back to let Ellie in.

"Alright, alright, come in before you wake the neighbour's baby," she says, jerking her head in the direction of said neighbour's house. "Where's the fire?"

Ellie has the decency to make sure she's several steps into the house before turning around, voice raised. She knows better than to approach Tess like this, asking for a fight, but her emotions are vibrating in her chest. She can't not raise her voice.

"You're gonna tell me right now. Everything. What happened at the Firefly lab, and what Joel is keeping from me. And don't try to bullshit me, Tess. I know you know."

Belatedly, she thinks that Tommy probably knows, too. But Tess was with them. Tess was in that car when she woke up, still in a hospital gown, and Joel lied.

Tess closes the door and locks it. This close, she can feel the fury practically radiating off Ellie's skin, and she barely gets her mouth open to comment on it before Ellie is unloading on her.

Teenagers.

"Do not yell at me," she replies, curtly, ignoring the dread pooling in her stomach. She knew this was coming someday, but she always imagined Joel would head her off on it, deal with it. Tess waves Ellie in deeper, herding her towards the kitchen. "Sit down. What do you mean? The hospital?"

Ellie looks ready to protest, but settles for stomping right into the dining room and sitting down at the table.

"He's been lying to me for years. I know it. He said they ran their tests and it wasn't gonna work, but--"

He knew what it meant to her. Why not let the doctors explain to her, so she could understand?

Her voice catches in her throat, and she clears it, breathing heavily.

"Tess. What did he do?"

Tess moves around the kitchen. It's not that she doesn't have a good pokerface –– it's gotten better, actually, with a couple years of living quaintly under her belt –– but she also knows it's not her story to tell. There's no puttering around that'll draw the conversation out long enough for Joel to get back, though. He probably won't be home until dinner, and that feels like an eternity away.

"Both of us have a long and complicated history with the Fireflies, Ellie, and we've put them behind us," Tess replies, curtly, as she pulls a pan out of the cupboard. "In a perfect world, you being there would have been a good thing, but it wasn't. It wasn't going to work. I think we're all unhappy about that."

She sets about making Ellie some breakfast. She's so fucking skinny, and that bothers Tess; things got so lean in Boston that any kid should take advantage of Jackson's relative prosperity. Eggs, Tess thinks. They got some fresh ones from the fellow up the street.

"Yeah? Well, I haven't put them behind me. I want to fucking talk about it, and he won't!" She hits the side of her fist onto the wooden table. "He's scared. I can see it."

As good as she is at reading him, she can't see the specifics. But she knows what he's capable of, and where her imagination leads her makes her insides twist up.

"Did he kill them all? The doctors?"

But why would he ever do that?

Tess leans against the countertop. A lifetime ago, she might have had some sort of trick up her sleeve, some way to finesse a deal-gone-awry into something more in her favour. She knows Ellie's onto it, though. The kid's smart. Emotionally attuned. Anything Tess could say would only feel like an obvious diversion, and Tess has to see this as some sort of hail mary, a last chance at getting information before running off and doing something stupid.

Last thing she wants to do is cut the kid's last tether to reason loose, especially if Joel's already lost his thread with her.

She purses her lips for a moment.

"What's the end goal here, Ellie?" Tess asks. "Why do you feel like he's done wrong by you?"

She doesn't know what the end goal is. The truth? She already knows she won't like it. Joel has been nothing but good to her. A father in all the ways that matter most. He makes sure she's well fed, safe. He tries to connect where he can, learning about space and watching her stupid shows and browsing her comic books. He keeps every sketch she gives him, and even asks for more.

But ever since that day, that promise before they came here, something hasn't felt right. It was easy to ignore for a long time. Not anymore.

Ellie pinches the bridge of her nose, pressure building between her eyes.

"Just... just answer the question, Tess."

“He didn’t kill them all,” Tess replies, pointed. She knows that. There’s no way they were the only ones in that building. Someone survived, no doubt. That was probably a mistake.

Tess shakes her head.

“He owes you the truth. Alright? I agree with you. He’s being a coward. But it’s not my truth to tell, either, and you shouldn’t hear it from me.”

Her stomach sinks. He shot his way out of that hospital, taking her. They left in one fucking hurry, and now she knows that much is right.

"He's not gonna tell me. I've asked. I need to go back there myself."

Maybe someone is still there.

“He’s not going to like that,” Tess warns, though she’s sure Ellie knows that just fine on her own. “And I don’t like it either, for that matter.”

It’s a twenty or so hour ride by horseback from Jackson’s gates to the hospital. By car it’s only five, give or take a bit, but on that particular day, they’d run out of gas with a whole day’s walk left. No prospect of that leaves Tess confident about Ellie just running off.

She gives Ellie a long, hard look. She loves this kid. She knows it. But given the world they live in, she still struggles with Joel’s choice. Her own complicity, too.

“But if that’s what you want to do, you’ll have to do it smart.”

Part of her expects Tess to tie her to the chair so that she can't run off before Joel gets back home. With her intention clear, Joel would never let her be unattended. Hell, she'd never be allowed near the stables, just in case she tried to take a horse to run. Ellie tenses, ready for a fight--maybe a physical one--but it doesn't happen.

"... you're not gonna try and stop me from going?"

Oh, she'll Joel, that she knows. But by then Ellie will be hours out.

Tess sighs; she can’t confirm or deny it. Though she loves this kid, she loves her man, too, and she’s never reneged on a serious promise to him before. No interest in starting now, no desire to wound him even if he’s being unrealistic about his daughter’s grasp on the truth.

“Ellie,” she says, the mildest bit frustrated. “You turn into a reckless little hellion when you’re fired up. You’re not gonna not go, no matter what I say.”

Ellie rubs her face. At least that's established.

"Joel going to come after me the moment he knows I'm gone."

He will. Tess's mild frustration immediately blossoms into something deeper, more frustrated. She is about to be in a world of trouble with Joel herself, to say nothing of Tommy and Maria, who take the security of Jackson's walls with a seriousness Tess will never understand. Once a smuggler, always a smuggler, maybe. There are some lines you can't uncross.

She walks over to Ellie, and she puts a finger in her face, sternly.

"You are going to eat a good breakfast, and then you will go to your place and pack up what you need. While you do that, I am going to put together some supplies for the road," she says, sternly. "From there, you have two options. Either we get him and tell him that you're going with or without him, or you just go on your own and I hold him off as long as I can."

She is angry about this. It's been a few long years of slowly building tension, and steadily cracking trust. Maybe if it just breaks cleanly, they'll be able to fix this mess well before it completely shatters.

What needs to be done will be done.

She hates having a finger wagged at her, but Tess' words are oddly encouraging. She supports this. She must get it, to some degree, even if Ellie can't find the words to explain exactly why she needs to know the truth, even if destroys every good thing that's happened since. It has to be better than living in a lie. It has to be better than looking at Joel and wondering. The older she gets, the harder it is to ignore.

If she's going to hate him, she wants to be able to say exactly why.

"I need to go alone."

Tess nods.

"I figured," she says, walking away again. "You two have been on the outs for a long time now."

She sets about breakfast. Eggs, toast, a bit of cheese, a bit of salted pork. Enough to fill Ellie's belly for a hard trip. She ponders that this all falls on Joel. His relationship with Ellie is deeper, sure, but Tess can't help but think Ellie knows all the answers anyway; otherwise she'd be just as furious with her.

"How pissed off at me are you?"

(Look at what a cross-country trip and Jackson has made her: the kind of woman who cares if people are mad at her.)

Ellie is pretty sure she'll vomit if she actually eats. She doesn't refuse the food, but she's not eager to touch it.

"I'm not pissed at you." And maybe not even at Joel. Hurt. Disappointed. The emotions are so intense that maybe it translated into anger. She doesn't know. She sighs, frustrated. "Annoyed, I guess. But I know you'd never sell him out. No matter what he did."

Tess sits down with her. If Ellie doesn't eat, she doesn't go. It's a matter of survival, and also a matter of Tess not having learned how to cook at her age just to watch food go to waste.

"Hmm," she hums. She doesn't quite believe it, but then again, there's no telling what will spit up once Ellie actually knows. Tess mulls it over a moment and then remarks: "He went out on a limb for me in even starting this whole thing, in taking you at all. He trusted my judgement. Only fair that I have trust in my partner's judgement, too."

"What are you going to tell him when he comes back?"

He won't actually notice she's missing until a significant amount of radio silence is had. He checks in, now and then. Finds reasons to come and chat, and she's never minded. Sometimes he brings over music or books or shows her a new song if he happens to remember it or figure it out.

It makes her feel sick, imagining the absence of that. And then it makes her angry because that's not what she should be torn up about.

Tess exhales, long and slow.

“I don’t know, kiddo. Probably the truth, just what he needs to know. He and I will sort it out with each other later.”

"He's had so many fucking chances to tell me the truth," she says, eyes stinging as she thinks back to every quiet, comfortable moment. Every spat. That fucking couple they found, and how he refused to give her answers. He has to know how obvious he was.

"He did this."

"The Fireflies fucked up too," Tess says. She has –– had –– a complicated relationship with them, and though she still wishes things were different sometimes, she's had a lot of truths to accept, too.

It will be difficult for Ellie to every understand that, though. She never experienced the worst of them, just the Fireflies at their most romantic, their most idealistic. It's hard to know how deep the problems went without first-hand experience.

"Not that it changes anything about Joel, but they made a fuckton of mistakes. Now eat up."

"The Fireflies were trying, at least. That has to count for something."

Marlene believed. Riley, too.

Ellie looks down at the food and shakes her head.

"If you want me to barf all over this table, I'll eat."

Tess disagrees on some visceral level, even if she wishes she didn't. It's been too many long years, mulling over her own culpabilities. Her own experience watching the Fireflies go from promising to little more than a chain of abandoned dog-tags, corpses and dreams all across the country has made it difficult to accept otherwise anymore. It's gone. Her meaning is now wrapped up with her people, not the greater world.

But she doesn't say it. It's not worth it, not right now.

"You're not going to make that whole trip and back on an empty stomach, if you're not fed," she says. And then, with a pointed look: "If you're starving and have to stop earlier than you need to, then you're going to lose your head start. You know how many times I suffered on drops that went on longer than expected because I didn't feel like choking down some shitty MRE before heading out?"

Don't insult her cooking, Ellie.

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