A/N: Oh my goodness, I am so sorry! Life is happening, but thanks so much for sticking with me this long. This new chapter is dedicated to Lumy12, who sent me the kindest re-review just as I was editing this draft. Thanks, love, for not giving up on me! Anyhow, apologies for the wait, and enjoy :)

It looked like late fall, if only judging by the irregular color of the trees, some of which were nearly bare already, and by the leaves that strewed the ground, clinging to the edges of the roadside where it met the grass, lining ditches and mounding in heaps against the north sides of trees. The sound of his footsteps was loud, even louder than usual, which somehow irked him, even though he remembered that falling leaves and the crunching that accompanied a walk through them used to be one of his few joys. Some people's stride was a steady beat: thud, thud, thud, thud, like a marching band. He preferred to think of his more like easy-listening jazz: tha-thunk, tha-thunk, tha-thunk, tha-thunk. He could almost hear the raspy croon of the saxaphone in the background. It was the only type of music he'd really heard, as the raided record supply must have been mainly comprised of the hoardings of a collector. But it was nice nevertheless, soothed the pain that wrapped his legs ever since he could remember, filled his ears so that he didn't have to hear the shouts and fear when his brother would come in, yelling and breaking things just so he'd feel better about having to pull more than his share.

The sun was bright, catching on the lighter leaves, the one that shone the color of lemons. Gosh, how he missed lemons. He'd had one once, had paid a fortune for it from one of those smugglers who went between districts salvaging what they could. Apparently they'd found a tree in the backyard of a house in the country and picked them there. It was so sour it made his entire face feel crumpled in like a Dixie-cup, but it was so good, the tingle down his throat, the slight hint of sweetness if you could manage to pop just one tiny particle, just one tine pip with your teeth. He'd made it last two weeks, kept it wrapped in piece of cellophane so it wouldn't dry out. James told him to do that. One of his nicer bits of advice. The others, from a fairly early age, Reuben had been fairly sure were anatomically impossible. Then he was proven that some things are hellishly easy – for other people.

The pack on his back was light, the straps didn't chafe his shoulders despite the amount of things they'd salvaged to carry. They. Reuben looked around, but he was alone. It was nice, actually. Easy to get used to. As the sun grew brighter, the leaves started to take on a shiny quality, a sheen that hurt his eyes. Even the sound of his footsteps was dulled, and he limped along in a sort of daze, lost in the undulating high and low of the warm sun's fingers reaching down. And then James was there, tackling him to the road, the asphalt grinding black into the skin of his elbows, smacking him hard on the back of the head. The face leered close to him, the face that people had often complimented, had said proved their relationship to each other, that resemblance he so hated because he saw it when he looked into the mirror, but the words formed by the grinning mouth were lost, the sound blurry like the roar of cicadas in the trees. No matter how hard Reuben fought, it was like trying to move a mountain, his arms were pinned beneath him, his strength seemed nothing. When an arm came up, pressing into his windpipe, cutting off his air supply, Reuben thrashed, his head striking something hard as he came to with a sharp sob, wriggling wildly away from the blanket that smothered him, eyeing what his mind barely processed as having struck his head.

A sofa. The leg of an old-fashioned sofa. The blanket lay in a tangled heap down around his waist and he fell back, rolling onto his side, his hands still tied behind him as he drew in long breaths, trying to calm his dream-fevered mind. A dream. Again. He'd stopped having them for a while, which was good, as anytime he'd wake the others things were never good. But when he was on his own with Al, they'd come back. He wasn't really sure why, but they were back with a vengeance. James was dead. David was dead. He was here, in the settlement on the river, Al was probably here too, still in solitude because he was stubborn. But Tommy – the man had been kind. He'd questioned him closely, but Reuben had nothing to hide. And they'd taken him home. The other man – a brother of Tommy's, it was unmistakable – had tried to stop them, but Tommy had won out. And Maria, the woman with the blonde hair who was Tommy's wife had given him a heated plate of spagetti-o's, and that was tantamount to a peace offering as far as he was concerned.

He took in one last deep breath, feeling his chest expand, and let it out slowly, shifting his shoulders from where they were pinched together behind his back. In a day or so, maybe they'd take them off. He was resolved to be good, and wait. He'd been chained up for longer before.

Footsteps on a set of creaking stairs reached his ears, and Reuben lifted his head, straining his eyes through the darkness, but seeing nothing. Finally, on the bottom step, he saw a pair of bare feet, but due to his position, couldn't lift his gaze any higher without hauling himself into an upright position. A voice cut through the shadows.

"Was all that noise you?"

A girl's voice. He swallowed, and nodded, the sound of his head whispering against the floor a preamble to his actual response.

"Yeah, that was probably me. Sorry."

"What the heck were you doing?"

The feet came closer, but came to a stop several paces away. A safe distance. Reuben used his legs to brace himself, and he pushed up into a sitting position parallel to the sofa, resting one shoulder on the derelict cushion.

"Dreaming," he said, his tone slightly ashamed. "Nightmare, but then I hit my head and woke up."

"Joel usually sleeps there," the girl's voice volunteered. "But he's on watch tonight. Don't know how that's gonna work tomorrow night when he's not."

"I was wondering if I was allowed to get up there..." Reuben mused, but stopped short as the girl entered his line of vision. It was the girl from the gate, the one who had been so angry at recognizing Al... He took in her face, pale in the meager light, surrounded by irregular locks of brown hair, her arms crossed over her chest above a belly that was heavily pushing against the fabric of the shirt she was wearing, and looking nonsensically like she'd swallowed a globe.

"Joel... he's Tommy's – brother?" Reuben hazarded, adjusting his feet once again to brace himself more securely against the sofa.

"Yup."

"Okay. I'm Reuben. I'd shake your hand, but -"

"I don't want to shake your hand," she bit out. "Just stay right there, that's close enough."

"...I was gonna say that I'm kind of tied up," Reuben finished, shrugging again as well as he could. "Are you Ellie?"

Her eyes narrowed. "How did you know my name?"

"I heard Joel say it. He was worried about you."

"Heck, yeah. You're a cannibal, we're all gonna sleep just great knowing you're here under our roof," she jeered in a quiet voice, uncrossing her arms and throwing up her hands for emphasis.

"I'm not like them," he returned slowly. "You don't have to believe me, but I'm not."

She made no response to this, but reached behind her and pulled a piece of folded up paper from the waistband of her pants, the sound crackling in the darkness. "Too dark to read it, it's itchy as heck," she muttered, scratching at the area behind her.

"What is it?"

She looked at him again, jumpy, like she'd forgotten he was there for a moment.

"It's a letter."

"Oh. Who's it from?"

"Marlene."

He nodded as if he knew precisely who that was. Ellie let out a dejected sigh and threw herself into the wingback chair by the fireplace, keeping one eye on the young man who was tied up in the floor in front of the sofa, fingering the paper.

"I'm sorry I woke you up," Reuben said at last. "I'm sorry I woke me up, actually, but-"

"'S fine, I wasn't asleep," Ellie mumbled, waving a hand before propping her face on it.

"Because of me?"

"Don't give yourself so much credit," she scowled.

Reuben tilted his head. "Because of..." He nodded toward her, eyes indicating her swollen stomach.

"I'm getting used to it actually, either that or tiredness wins out," she shrugged. "Just the letter. Not every day you get a letter from someone who knew your mom. Talking about stuff you wished you'd known sooner. And knowing you've screwed up so bad you probably can't come back from it. Just... great crap like that."

Reuben sat in silence for a long moment, the various facets of what she said bouncing around inside his head. "Sounds like loads of fun," he murmured at last.

"Yeah," she returned, rubbing a hand over her face. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Me either. But I've got to say it's not quite as fun as being ziptied to a couch. Add that to your list and maybe we'll be even." His tone held a slight note of teasing to it.

Ellie narrowed her eyes and let out a small scoffing breath. "Even? Yeah, like what do you have to complain about? Living in the woods, yeah, but there's no infected, just bandits. Having to smell the other guy when he walks upwind?" She snorted. "Not that it's a contest, but I think my crap wins."

Reuben winced, stretching his legs out a bit stiffly, the old kinks in the muscles pulling again. "Try me," he said.

Ellie looked dead at him from the shadows. "I already did. Your turn now."

"But was that all?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. Also, my best friend sorta made me want to never forgive her and never want to see her again because she's a freakin' liar. I know, I know..." Ellie lifted a hand. "Sounds like a stupid story." Her voice pinched small. "But it's a really big deal to me."

"Yeah..." Rebuen returned. "Doesn't sound that stupid. What's stupid is people with their sob stories of a clicker almost getting them, of them being without food, running low on ammo, being cold and injured. That's nothing to the stuff in your mind. The stuff in your heart, it's much tougher." The girl was watching him with a fixed gaze.

"You look like you got the short end of the stick more often than you'll admit," she said in a low voice.

"Oh, I'll admit it. Pretty much all the time." In that moment, Reuben wished more than anything that his hands were free, the scratchy cushion of the couch had started an itch that burned like fire on the back of his neck, his shabby overgrown hair tickling the spot and making it even worse. "Was beaten up, screamed at. But the worst part – yeah, it's not that stuff. It's the stuff that lingers in your mind." He held her gaze. "I know what David tried to do to you."

A low growl rose from her throat. "Don't you dare start talking like you know me," she began, her eyes nearly glowing in the darkness.

"I don't know you. But I know what he was going to do."

"How?" she spat.

"Because he did it to me. And did it to me again, and again. And James, my brother, for God's sake. He did it too, both of them. The stuff that sticks around."

Ellie stared at him in silence for a long, tense moment, and then finally dropped her head, staring at her lap, her eyes drooping, fingers fidgeting the letter in her hands.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "That stinks."

"Yeah," Reuben returned, dropping his own head. "It's alright, you've been through crap too."

"Sometimes..." Ellie's voice caught in an odd almost-sob. "Sometimes I'm just so tired of it. And then I get mad, but that makes me even more tired, and in the end I just – I just want it to be over. But I can't do that, because other people rely on me, they care about me, and all that."

The young man took a deep breath, contemplating his response. His mind held all manner of pent-up things that he put together in rare moments of solitude, but had never practiced voicing. "S-sometimes," he started, his tongue muddling against the back of his teeth as he struggled to sort the words out in order. This was important, he knew it. For both himself, and the girl in the chair who seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Sometimes we feel so much and… and so deeply that… I guess… we just get very tired, in a way that makes us— that makes us unsure what will help us feel better. So we do nothing. Or we get angry. But that takes you just... right back to where you started."

Ellie didn't look up, didn't move a muscle. "Yeah, that sounds about right," she whispered after a long pause. When she looked up, her face was blank of the suspicion so recently harbored there. "Hey, sorry for being a jerk," she mumbled. "Maybe you can talk Joel and Tommy into untying you tomorrow."

A smile pulled at the corners of Reuben's mouth. "Yeah, I can't feel my fingers. At least I can only feel three of them."

Ellie grinned in spite of herself. "Three of them? Which three?"

Reuben pursed his mouth for a second. "My... right thumb and index finger, and my left pinky."

The girl snickered. "Wow. Okay, then."

All this time, they'd both been conscious of keeping their voices down so as not to rouse any of the others in the house. So far, they'd seemed successful, but Ellie knew Joel would be returning any time from watch and somehow thought that he wouldn't' be happy to see her sitting and cozily chatting with their prisoner.

"I'm gonna go back to bed," she said, pushing herself up from the chair and holding in the huffy breath she felt like exhaling. "Joel's gonna be back, you'd better look like you're sleeping too."

The young man nodded, and just before Ellie's feet reached the bottom step, his voice cut through the shadows in a harsh whisper.

"Ellie."

She turned.

"Is Joel..." He swallowed noisily. "Is he going to hurt me? Pretty sure he hates me." His voice stilled to silence again. "Will he..."

"He's not going to hurt you," Ellie said, a tinge of compassion coloring her tone. "Not unless you do anything stupid. He's... good. He cares about us."

"Okay." Reuben nodded, seeming somewhat satisfied, even if the line of tension through his shoulders hadn't relaxed in the slightest. It was something that pervaded the air, something that could almost be felt, prompting Ellie to add, "He really is. Even if he seems kind of... overprotective sometimes."

"Yeah." Reuben forced a smile. "Well, at least he'll be a good father."

Ellie was nonplussed for a second before the scrambled thought finally assembled in her mind. "What the- no. No! What the heck, no... he's not – it's not-"

Reuben's eyes widened as he realized his mistake. "Oh, I'm- I'm so sorry," he stammered. "I just assumed-"

"Gosh, he's like my freakin' dad, that's so weird," Ellie hissed, burying her face in the inside of her elbow. "Why'd you even..."

"Sorry!" Reuben shot back. "I said I was sorry."

Silence reigned, leaving the awkward question hanging out there in the void. It wasn't any of his business.