TOMMY KNEW IT WAS IMPOLITE, but even if you paid him a million dollars, he would not be able to look away from the man that was sitting next to his brother.

At first, Tommy thought that maybe he had recognized him from someplace, and that was why he found himself watching every shift in posture and every blink of an eye.

Then, Tommy decided that, even if he did recognize him, he still had every single right to be staring at the man who had waddled into Jackson with blood over his face and two weird little girls by his sides.

No matter what, with a valid reason or without one, Tommy was watching the man next to Joel like his very life depended on it. He hadn't introduced himself, and he hadn't been asked to because nobody really wanted to get too close to the stranger that was drenched in blood and bruises.

Apart from Joel, of course. Which was yet another thing that Tommy couldn't understand.

First off, he had no idea how or why Joel would trust some stranger with coming all the way to Wyoming with him. There had never been any mention of this man over the radio.

Second, Tommy had no clue why Joel would be booting up his own rendition of the Babysitter's Club on his way there. He had made the connection that the guy and the shortest girl were related, but he had no clue where the tallest girl had come from.

Third and finally, this guy was totally dangerous. He knew that he kept circling back to the "covered in blood part" but it really was fucking unsettling. And he also knew that it must've been difficult to maintain some sort of hygiene while you were on the road for so long, but Joel hadn't shown up with blood under his fingernails and blood on his hip, and blood on his face, and blood literally everywhere.

Despite his rough appearance and Joel seated next to him, he looked like he didn't want to be there. He knew every pair of eyes was on him, and it looked like he wasn't the biggest fan of that. Maybe he wasn't as horrible as he looked, but Tommy wasn't persuaded that easily.

'There's more if you need it.' Maria offered politely, looking just as captivated by the stranger. The voice of his wife made Tommy drift back to reality for a moment, shifting in his seat and clearing his throat.

'Thank you, ma'am.' Joel spoke for all of them as the remaining three in his group ate without a breath in between bites. 'It's been a while since we've had a meal.'

'Actually, I don't think I've ever had a proper meal. This is fucking amazing.' The brunette said happily, shoving scrambled egg into her mouth like there was no tomorrow. The table went impossibly more quiet, and Joel looked at the man next to him as if he was expecting him to do something about it. This seemed to be normal within their group because he did so without a second thought.

'Ellie, come on. Manners.' He scolded gently. His voice was quiet. Tommy wondered if it was like that naturally or if he was just anxious about sticking out like the sorest of sore thumbs.

The girl named Ellie said no more, just shoveled food into her mouth and looked at her friend, the stranger's daughter, who was smiling at someone from across the restaurant. A tall girl with brown hair and brown eyes was watching the two of them like a hawk, and had apparently already made friends with Lou.

'What!?' She shouted at her, scaring the shit out of the kid and causing her to run away as fast as she could.

'What is wrong with you?' Joel asked incredulously, glaring at her across the table.

'What about her manners?' Ellie waved at where the girl once stood with a grimace.

'She was just curious.' Maria assured them with a small shake of her head. 'Kids around here don't usually look or talk like you two.'

'And the guys usually don't show up lookin' like you.' That slipped out before Tommy could stop it. The man looked up at him.

'...Yeah, well, no bed and breakfasts out in the mountains.' He pursed his lips awkwardly, clearly just as uncomfortable as Tommy was. It was obvious that he was trying to make the best of a bad situation, of a bad (what he hoped to be) joke, but it was kind of clear that this guy didn't like Tommy any less than Tommy didn't like this guy.

'Maybe we'll teach them to.' Ellie threatened Maria where she sat at the head of the table, eyes narrowed. 'And I want my gun back.'

'They also aren't armed.' Maria said.

'Y'know what? I think maybe y'all got off on the wrong foot a little.' Tommy stated the obvious, and Joel snorted.

'Reap what you sow.' Joel scolded his little brother, tilting his head subtly towards the man next to him to remind him of what he had just said. The man noticed it but said nothing more.

'You tried to kill my dad.' The girl at the end of the table spoke up, looking right at Maria and ignoring the men and their bickering.

'Lou.' Her dad scolded.

'Well, we gotta be real careful about who we let in this place. And, you know...' Tommy trailed off, waving his wrist at Joel's friend absently as he tried to think of something creative. 'You know... But-But, it's all bark. We're just trying to scare off the people that wanna try us.'

'Well, you got a couple of thousand-year-olds shitting themselves out there.' Ellie sighed.

'Ellie!' Joel said sternly.

'They said that you leave dead bodies around?' Lou repeated Florence's words from a while ago.

'Those are the people who tried us.' Said Maria, far too calmly.

'A bad reputation doesn't mean you're bad.'

'Yeah, guys. Looks can be deceiving.' Joel's friend raised his eyebrows and took a sip of his coffee, obviously making fun of the treatment Tommy was giving him. The girls laughed, but Joel poked him in the ribs with his elbow.

'Sometimes.' Maria looked straight at him, and they held eye contact for a moment before the man scratched the side of his nose and looked away.

'...Ma'am, we're grateful for your hospitality and all. But, it'd be nice to have a moment here, just for family.'

There was an awkward pause in the room. For once, Tommy wasn't judging Joel's friend and neither was Maria. Instead, they were holding hands and smiling at Joel uncertainly. Tommy spoke. 'Well, Maria is family, actually.'

'Oh, shit! Congrats.' Ellie smiled at them as the girl named Lou began to nod her head and say a variation of the same thing. Even the man Tommy had been death-staring was smirking a tiny bit, nodding his head. He didn't say congratulations, but he wasn't frozen to the spot like Joel was, so Tommy decided that he was somewhere within the middle ground of it all.

Tommy brushed those words of encouragement off with a nod, looking at his brother, caring the most about what he thought of this. Unfortunately, Joel was glued to his chair, face stone-cold, and it took a slap on the thigh from Ralph to get him to smile.

'Congrats.' He choked out, clearly not meaning it at all. But, Tommy accepted that.

'How about a tour?' The youngest Miller grinned.

...

'WE SETTLED HERE AROUND SEVEN YEARS AGO.' Maria informed them as Ralph waddled next to Joel, practically hiding behind the other man as they walked down the streets and people stopped and turned to look at them. Joel had no protests about it. He even squared his shoulders a little bit to shield him more. 'Just a handful of us back then. That section was already a gated community so we built the rest of the wall out from there. Stopped most of the raiding parties, but we still find pockets of them.'

'And you said Infected?' Joel asked, looking over at his newly revealed sister-in-law.

'Yeah, but usually smaller colonies,' Tommy answered on behalf of his wife. 'Wandered off from the cities. All this open country out here, it's a turkey shoot. I still got my seven hundred, but I found a variable power scope. Sub-MOA. Can headshot those fuckers from a half mile out.'

Joel nodded his head up and down, the gun-talk registering easy with him, and narrowed his eyes at Ralph when the man next to him whispered 'Nerd!' next to his ear. Joel smiled a little. 'How do you keep this place quiet?'

'Carefully.' Maria looked back at them, able to catch their grins before they were wiped away. 'Being in the middle of nowhere helps. Not advertising what we have, staying off the radio. House of worship, multifaith. School. Laundry. Old bank works as the jail, not that we've needed it.'

'So, you draw power from the dam?' Ralph looked up at the electrical cords running over the town as they passed underneath them, looking at the woman for an answer. Of course, Tommy was watching him from the corner of his eye like the weirdo that he was.

'Got that working a couple years ago. After that, sewage, plumbing, water heaters, lights. Then, the smaller things like outlets, televisions, CD players, stuff like that.' Maria said as if it was no big deal and she wasn't actively blowing his mind right now.

'Oh, cool.' Ralph said softly.

'You wanna see the farm?' Maria asked.

'Yeah!' Ralph said loudly.

...

'HEY, JOEL! CHECK IT! BAAAAH!' Ellie pointed to the animals in front of them as a flock of sheep ran past, reminding him of his bullshit confession of wanting to be a sheep farmer when he was older. Ellie then remembered what Ralph wanted to be, and spun around. 'Hey! You two would totally love it here. Joel could be, like, the sheep guy, and you could be the, like, other animal guy. And me and Lou could help too! Totally.'

'No, I hate animals.' Lou mumbled negatively, shaking her head and trudging through the snow after Ellie. Nobody paid a lot of attention to that comment, and Ellie then went on to ask Maria whether she was in charge.

Lou looked around at the animals she had expressed a bit of a hatred for and furrowed her eyebrows when she found a boy next to the stable in front of them. The blonde, curly-haired one from earlier, the one who had told Ralph to shut up and was staring at her an awful lot during that whole terrifying interaction. He was petting a horse with a man next to him, the one who had done all the yelling and demanding earlier.

Bowie, that was his name! How could she ever forget it?

'No way!' Ellie gasped, hurrying up to the stable where the two men stood and rushing over to a little baby horse that was poking her head out from under a bigger horse's neck.

'That's our newest one. You two wanna pet her?' Lou shook her head at Maria's suggestion, but Ellie accepted the proposal with a big smile.

'Yeah, what's her name?' Ellie asked excitedly.

'Shimmer.' Maria smiled. 'The big one's her dad, he's called Geronimo.'

'Geronimo?' Lou repeated, smiling a little at the stupid name.

'Hey, Geronimo is a cool name.' Bowie defended the horse, seeing as it wasn't able to stick up for itself. It was clear that he was the one who picked that name and that's why he was so offended by it.

'Yeah, okay, whatever, then.' Lou was clearly unconvinced, grinning even bigger after that small interaction. She hadn't seen him since earlier, but she was happy to be reunited with him, even if it was only a short time apart. 'I'm just saying. Bowie and Geronimo? Your family doesn't have the most... Normal names in the world.'

'Excuse me?' Bowie said.

'You're excused.' Lou teased.

After a small moment of awkward silence, Bowie started to laugh, and Lou's attention drifted from Shimmer and Geronimo as she began to bicker with this random kid that she had just met, smiling like she had won a trophy as he giggled and tried to defend his objectively awful name choice.

Meanwhile, Ralph was watching the two of them, not even bothered by the horses or wildlife surrounding him, and that was how Joel knew he was taking this a little too seriously. Joel nudged him, taking his mind off of the kid that was flirting (pretty terribly) with this daughter and making him zone back into the conversation that was happening between Maria and Ellie.

'...You don't have to worry about him, you know.' A voice assured him, and it wasn't the Miller that Ralph expected it to be.

Tommy was standing a rather close distance from Ralph with an expression of neutralness on his face, a first time for both things. Ralph could tell that Tommy was trying to get past, um, everything, and he appreciated it, but he was still a little shocked by his attempt to speak to him. And a little confused by what he had said.

'Bowie, I mean.' Tommy clarified, gesturing to the boy. 'He's a good kid. The Delvecchio's are a good family, you got nothing to worry about. They run the pharmacy, so, y'know, they're trustworthy. Besides, your kid's got a heart of stone. Caught her glaring daggers at everybody on the way down here.'

'Like father like daughter, I guess.' Ralph joked, and Tommy actually cracked a smile at him. Ralph swore to God he was hallucinating- Not just this interaction, but the whole town.

'Hey, what'd you say your name was?' Tommy asked, taking a gloved hand out of his pocket to offer it to Ralph.

'Uh, Ralph.' Ralph smiled a little, accepting it and shaking it gently. 'Ralph Zhenya.'

'Zhenya.' Tommy repeated. Ralph nodded, expecting this to be a parody of the whole Lou and Bowie situation, but he grew a little bit curious when Tommy's smile faded at the corners, his grip on Ralph's hand beginning to loosen. 'Zhenya from the Boston QZ?'

'Yeah. Why?' That small flame of hope to get along with Miller Number Two was out like a light. A wave of paleness crossed Tommy's face, and his smile was gone completely by now.

'...Nothing.' It was clearly something because Tommy snatched his hand back like there was no time left in the world and took a handful of baby steps to the left, approaching Maria and abandoning Ralph. Normally, he would've just brushed something like that off, but he just couldn't seem to do it right now. Not with such a blatant, yet unknown, reason behind it.

'Well, I'm sure they'd like a shower, some new clothes.' Ralph didn't know if Maria had noticed it, but her timing was pretty great for Tommy, not-so-great for Ralph. 'We can put them in the empty house across the street from us.'

'...Um. Yeah, it's a- It's a decent place.' Tommy cleared his throat, looking at Ralph for a split second before turning to his brother. 'Pretty much untouched since oh-three, but it's all hooked up with heating and electricity. Three bedroomer, but... Could be worse.'

'Well, I can take the kids and Ralph over there if you two wanna catch up?' Maria suggested. That was when Ralph knew she had overheard him and Tommy because, up until then, nobody had addressed Ralph by name until he had introduced himself. Joel called him Al a couple of times, but Maria didn't want to leap into friendly nicknames right off the bat.

'Oh, I was actually hoping to show Lou the jail. Is that cool?' Bowie spoke up hopefully, looking at Maria with a pleading grin on his face. Maria looked at Ralph, and then Bowie looked at Ralph. Ralph shrugged and the two of them grinned, hurrying off with their voices overlapping, leaving Ralph and Ellie alone with Maria.

'Shall we?'

...

'CHRISTMAS TREES AND BACON? Pretty decent setup.' Joel laughed, getting out of his seat and wandering over to a mural on the far side of the bar, his drink still in his hand. Him and Tommy had been in here for around fifteen minutes and they were still yet to address any Elephants in the room- Who Ellie was or why he had brought Ralph and Lou all the way out here with him.

Tommy decided to ask one thing at a time, starting with what he thought to be the most obvious. 'How's Tess?'

'...She's fine.' Joel replied, drinking his whiskey.

'And the kid?' Tommy asked secondly, eyebrows raised with that worried look on his face that had appeared out of nowhere all of a sudden, ever since the farm.

'Oh, yeah. She's the daughter of some Firefly muckety-muck. Tryna find her family somewhere out here. I was heading in this direction, so.'

'Really? Goodness of your heart?'

'There's a payment.' Joel sighed, and Tommy laughed behind a mouthful of whiskey. He picked up the bottle and began to walk around the bar, sliding it across the smooth wood and landing it right in front of Joel. Before Tommy could pop the question about Ralph, Joel was already speaking again. 'So, you know where they might be? These Fireflies?'

'Well, they got a base down at the University of Eastern Colorado.' Tommy informed, topping off their drinks. 'It's a week's ride south. But, it is extremely fucked up between here and there. Infected, raiders. It's not exactly an easy trip.'

'It'll be easy for us, seeing as how you can headshot Infected from half a mile away, which is a bunch of bullshit, by the way.' Joel said quietly, making Tommy smile for half a second.

'Yeah, I can't go.' The youngest brother said without an inch of regret or thoughtfulness, just wired on being firm with Joel.

'We made it across the country. The three of us can make it from here to Colorado.' Joel scoffed like it was nothing.

'You and him seem to be doing just fine by yourselves, actually.' Tommy sighed into his glass, setting it down when Joel clenched his jaw at that comment. The tone in the room shifted in just a matter of seconds, Joel clearly detesting the attitude that his brother had towards his best friend. He must have displayed those feelings on his face because Tommy launched into defense mode. '...Seriously, Joel. What were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Bringing some fucking crook out here, looking like he's just climbed out of hell itself? My guys had half a mind to fire straight at him, at you, as well!'

'Al is the reason I made it out of Boston, let alone all the way out here.' Joel said seriously, eyebrows pinched together. 'Is that it? You won't do it 'cause you're scared of some crook and his daughter, is that it?'

'I'm not scared of them, I just... I don't trust them is all.'

'Oh, yeah, just like you don't trust me either?' Joel snapped, getting more and more aggravated as this conversation continued. Across from him, Tommy was too. 'That's why you stopped talking to me on the radio, isn't it? In case the wrong people showed up. Is that what we are, Tommy? We the wrong people?'

'Joel, I'm not gonna-'

'Those things I did, Tommy, those things that you judge me for, I did those things to keep us alive.' Joel stepped closer to his brother, and Tommy didn't back down, not for a moment. He stood up, kicking his stool away from behind him and tightening his grip on his glass of whiskey. 'Ralph isn't any different. He did that shit, he killed those people, to keep me safe, and I owe him my goddamn life for it. He was protecting me and he was protecting the girls and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you bad mouth someone that I care about just because you think you're too high and mighty to hear what a perfect-fucking-person he is!'

'Oh, that perfect-fucking-person of yours was killing people way before you showed up, Joel.'

'...What the fuck's that meant to mean?'

...

NOTES
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