Maria was sound asleep when a noise jerked her from the world of dreaming and left her blinking in the dark. She had returned from duty late, and fallen asleep almost immediately. The only sounds that she could hear were the noises of Tommy's snoring, the ever-present ambiance of the generator, and the distant rush of the river. The rain had stopped, and she closed her burning eyes, preparatory to return to her slumbers when she heard it again – a light knocking on the door.
She sat up, fingering her pale hair behind her ears, and clicked on her flashlight, shielding its glow with her hand, and making her way to the door. Tommy's snores continued uninterrupted, and she pulled it open to reveal Ellie, her hair mussed, peeping from the shadows.
"Everything alright, Ellie?" Maria asked, looking over the girl's shoulder with her light, and seeing Joel slumbering, his back to them, on the sofa.
"Yeah, sorry to bother you." Ellie looked at her feet for a moment. "I'd like to talk to you, if that's okay."
"Sure, hold on just a second." Maria used her shielded light to locate her boots, and slipped them on, returning to the door, and beckoning Ellie to follow her. "Let's go out onto the porch, so we don't bother the guys."
Ellie followed the woman silently, and once they were outside, the fresh air of the rain-washed night surrounding them, they sat on the edge of the ragged wooden platform, and she inhaled a deep breath.
"Smells amazing," Ellie commented. "Like all the dirt and horrible stuff is gone for a while."
"Right you are." Maria leaned back against a support, and crossed her arms against the slight chill. "So, what's bothering you, sweetie?"
"Nothing, I just... thinking." Ellie shrugged, swinging her legs, her feet bare. She liked Maria, but didn't always know how to show it. She liked it when Maria called her 'sweetie'. She liked it when she'd hug Ellie, give her secret looks in the middle of a conversation with 'the guys' and the way she cooked amazing food and let Ellie have seconds as many times as she wanted. She took a deep breath. "Joel came and talked to me, and... I reacted like a total jerk."
Maria looked curious. "Really. That wasn't the way he told it."
"What did he tell you?" Ellie braced her hands on either side of her, and shifted, regarding Maria in the dim light from the yellow lamp in the middle of the compound.
"He said he'd told you what we'd been discussing, and you were a little resistant at first, but took it pretty well, all things considered."
Ellie raised her eyebrows. "Hm. Well, that's not how I'd have put it."
"How would you have put it?" Maria's eyes were smiling.
"More like, Joel tried to talk but I wouldn't let him, and when I finally let him, I freaked out and acted like a total idiot, and he was really nice, but I still gave him a heck of a time because it was hard for me to hear." She nodded. "That's what I would have said."
Maria grinned. "That's okay, and I don't really see a contradiction between the two." She sobered just a little. "So, it freaked you out?"
Ellie nodded. "Yeah," she breathed. "A lot. I don't want to have kids."
"Why not?"
"Well, you kind of have to have kids with someone else, right? And there isn't anyone I like enough for that."
Maria put her arm around the girl, and gave her a brief hug. "Mhm. It's a scary subject. You're not the only one, and both you and Joel are brave to have had the conversation anyway."
Ellie nestled into Maria, feeling her hair rumple comfortably against her shoulder. "Sooo... you and Tommy. Do you want to have kids?"
Maria was quiet for a moment, running her fingers up and down the sensitive skin on the back of Ellie's sleeve-clad arm, making her shiver happily, and squirm in closer. Maria smiled down at the top of the girl's head, and replied:
"We do. Well, we did."
"What do you mean?" Ellie tilted her face up and looked at Maria. Her gaze was fixed someplace ahead of her, her voice low.
"We can't. I can't."
"Why not?" Ellie pulled away, and crossed her legs. "I mean, it just never works?"
"I had an injury when I was about your age. Deep wound to the stomach – my father had to keep the bandits away from the plant by himself until I healed. It was almost two months before I was back on my feet again. It made sense then, that I'd never be able to have children, but I didn't give it much thought. Tommy and I have tried." She chuckled. "Believe me, we've tried, but apparently it's not meant to be."
Ellie looked at her lap. "Oh. Sorry."
"It's alright. You know, that's one of the reasons I'm glad you came back. Sometimes," she leaned in confidentially, "Sometimes in my head I pretend like you're my little sister. Or my daughter."
Ellie bobbed her head. "Glad that it makes you happy. Hope I'm a good little sister. Or daughter."
Maria smiled. "So, any other thoughts?"
"I don't know." Ellie flopped back and tipped her face skywards, making a disgruntled noise. "I don't know, but I don't feel like Joel wouldn't understand. I don't feel like you'd really understand either, but at least you're a girl."
Maria nodded. "Noted." She lay back by Ellie's side and they remained thus in silence for a long while. At last Ellie spoke again.
"Maria – how did you know you were in love with Tommy? I mean, how did you figure it out and when, and what did you do?"
"Ellie..." Maria took a deep breath. "I think I should tell you that things never happen the same way twice. Whatever I tell you is only what happened to me. My experience."
"But I have no experience," Ellie retorted. "Or... basically no experience." She bit her lip.
"You want to talk about it?" Maria turned her face toward the girl. There was a long pause.
"I don't know if I've been in love before," Ellie began, taking a deep breath. "There was someone – someone that I liked so much that it hurt when I wasn't around them, someone I wanted to be with so much because they made me happy, and because I liked to think I made them happy. But I don't know if that was love."
Maria's gaze was fixed on Ellie's face as she talked; she had her eyes squeezed shut, as if thinking very hard about what she wanted to say.
"Sometimes I would imagine that we could be together forever. If she was around, I didn't have to worry about anything else, and when she wasn't, it was like everything got... all horrible, or something..." Ellie trailed off, covering her face with her arm. "Ahh, I don't even know what I'm talking about."
"Was this a best friend?" Maria asked in a quiet voice. "This girl, was she your friend?"
"Yeah." Ellie's voice was muffled by her sleeve. "I totally miss her."
Maria lay in silence next to her for a long moment, until Ellie pulled her arm from her face, and rolled over, her back to Maria. The woman sat up, pulling her legs beneath her and put a gentle hand on Ellie's shoulder, and felt the girl lean back into her knees.
"Ellie," she said at last, her voice quiet. "Don't write that off as nothing. It doesn't sound like you have no experience with love."
"That wasn't what I meant," Ellie murmured, after a beat. "That's one thing. But I just freak out when I think about –" She broke off and shivered, hugging her arms around herself and curling into a smaller ball. "This guy, he tried to – one time, a long time ago, there was this guy..." She stopped short, her mind fogging up. She had tried so hard to forget this, the flames, his weight pressing her into the floor, his breath on her face...
"It's okay, sweetie," she heard Maria say, as if from far away. "It's okay, just take a deep breath." Ellie hadn't even realized she was crying until she tasted the tepid salt of the tears trickling down her cheeks.
"I – he didn't make me too excited about that kind of thing," she choked at last, and felt herself being pulled into an embrace by Maria, even though she felt powerless to return it. Ellie held her breath until the urges to gasp and sob went away, and then she pulled back, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "I don't want to fall in love. I never want to get married to a guy, I don't want to have kids..." Her voice was rising in pitch, and she could feel Maria take both of her hands in hers.
"Listen to me, Ellie. No one is going to make you do something you don't want to do. You have to do what you think is right."
"But that's being selfish," she sniffled. "And I don't want to be selfish."
"There's a fine line between denying yourself to do what's best, and making yourself pointlessly miserable. Can I ask you something?"
Ellie nodded.
"Have you ever liked a boy? A guy, at all?"
Ellie hesitated, and then shrugged. "Sure. Sam was my friend."
"No, I mean, like love. Like a crush."
Ellie took a deep breath. "Look, I don't know. I – I don't think so. But I'm just a kid."
"You're a young woman, Ellie. It's not easy, but I happen to know that you're one of the strongest young ladies out there. So I know that you can figure this out."
"You think so?" Ellie's pupils were enormous in the dim lamplight.
Maria simply kissed her on the forehead, and felt Ellie lean into the kiss, her eyes falling closed as she heaved a giant sigh.