miah @xodilfluvr - Tumblr Blog

Show me how bad you can hurt me [series]

Chapter 17 - Nothing fucks with my baby

[AO3] [Wattpad] [fic masterlist]

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

Chapter Summary: The feral dog was let off the chain, now we find out who holds the leash ;9

>>This might be a disturbing chapter, please read the tags!<<

Fic Summary: Four years after the outbreak, Joel and Tommy Miller are hardened smugglers in the Boston QZ: mean, violent, and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. When they’re paid an obscene amount to smuggle you across the ruined country to Columbus QZ, they didn't ask what secrets you carry to be worth that much. They just expect an easy job. You're supposed to be just cargo. They will soon discover this cargo has teeth… and the power to make even the worst men start to crack.

Tags: Tommy Miller x Reader, Dark!Tommy, Raider!Tommy, Explicit Sexual Content, Post-Cordyceps Outbreak (The Last of Us), Stockholm Syndrome, Dark Romance, Tommy is mean but not too much, Tommy Miller Fanfic, Enemies to Lovers, Tommy was corrupted by Joel, Vaginal Sex, Fireflies (The Last of Us), Slow Burn, Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Blood, heavy violence, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Slavery, Implied/Referenced Animal Cruelty

wc: 15k (i know, but you'll see it was impossible to break it)

The chair leg was still in his hand. He set it down on the table and looked fully at the room. Blood on the floorboards, on the wall, on his clothes, on his hands. It looked like the scene of something terrible, because it was.

So, Tommy stood there and waited for it: The sickness. The shaking. He knew by heart.

He crossed over to Damian and pressed two fingers to the man's throat. Nothing.

Then back to Joshua's. Nothing.

He waited. Breathing. Hands loose at his sides.

It didn't come.

His eyes found half a mirror hanging on the living room wall, and a man looked back at him: blood on his face, forehead split, one shoulder lower than the other. Tommy studied that face for a long moment. Looking for the monster. Looking for his brother's flat, dead eyes staring back.

They weren't there. He just looked tired and sure.

Joining us doesn't mean you'll never have blood on your hands again, Tommy. It means when you do, it's for the right reasons.

Your voice. From a horse's back, what it felt a lifetime ago, his arm around your waist while he argued against every word.

Sometimes one terrible thing is the price for a lot of good things, you said back then.

He'd hated that sentence. And now he stood in the middle of what he'd done, and it had come out exactly the way you said it would. This blood wasn't like other bloods. This blood had a reason. Two dead men in this room meant one woman getting out of a cage, and maybe many more. He didn't know their names or their faces, but it didn't matter. If he could open the door for you, he could open for all of them. For the first time in four years, killing hadn't taken something out of him.

It had given something: a purpose.

You'd been right. God help him, you'd been right the whole time, and it took this… this room, this day, you in a cage, for him to finally see it. All those weeks you'd preached at him, and he'd rolled his eyes and called it a fairy tale. But this was the whole idea, wasn't it? Standing right here. Fighting for the people who couldn't.

He'd told a younger version of himself once that he’d join the army because he wanted to protect people, and then he'd spent four years forgetting he ever said it.

He grabbed what he needed as fast as he could and quickly walked out. Because every hour mattered.

He'd been thirty feet away once, with a rifle in his hands and all the training in the world, and he'd still turned that corner too late. The constant nightmares would never allow him to forget the price of being late.

Damian had said it on the radio: nobody enjoys her before I do. And that sick rule was the only wall standing between you and those men. But Damian was never coming back, and Tommy had no way to know how long the wall would hold without him. A day? Two? All it took was one man deciding the boss was taking too long.

He would not, he could not, turn another corner too late.

The horses were tethered behind the house. Two of them, good ones. Tommy picked the big bay, set the other one loose to find its own luck, and climbed into the saddle with both shoulder and head injures pulsing in sync.

He reached the main road and stopped to place himself, checking the map against a rusted highway sign. And he was relieved. Those bastards had carried him a long way while he was out. A full day's ride, maybe more. And all of it south. Toward their own territory. They'd done him a favor hauling him closer to you.

He ran the math on the map with his finger. Four days of riding, maybe three, if he didn't stop. No sleeping, no eating. It was a brutal ask, and not for him, because he'd ride until he fell off. But for the animal under him.

He leaned forward and patted the horse’s neck, slow and gentle.

"Alright, buddy. Here's the deal." The horse's ear flicked while he spoke. " I need you to run further than you're gonna like. You get me there, and I swear I'll never ask you for another thing in your life." He rubbed between its ears.

Then he rode, and something in him changed inside the first mile.

He'd taken the covered road, his hands had steered the horse off the open stretch and into the treeline on their own. He was checking corners again. Marking cover, counting exits, reading every hedge like something could be behind it.

The flinch was back. He couldn’t afford to die anymore. He couldn’t afford to fail you.

And he made himself believe, because it was the only thing that kept the panic down: you were the smartest person in any room they put you in. You'd read every one of those men by now. You'd keep yourself safe with that mouth of yours.

---

On the first day, you'd kept the mantra running. I'm gonna be fine. I'm gonna be fine. I'm gonna be fine.

On the second day, somewhere in the afternoon, you realized you hadn't said it once.

Daylight hope had Frank and Marcus faces. That hope was reasonable: They knew you were taken, and Frank would not stop. You held that hope in the open, in front of the others.

At night, that hope would stop working. In the honest dark, with your hand on your own heartbeat, it was a different name. That was when your chest did the thing. Not a full episode.

It made no sense and you knew it. He didn't even know. As far as Tommy Miller knew, you were a week out from Baltimore, safe between two rifles, and he was driving north with his back to you, getting farther with every day.

You hoped, anyway.

In these days, you learned the difference between fear and dread. Fear was sharp. You knew fear well, you'd felt it plenty, even with the Millers. But dread was heavy. Dread was watching the girls leave and not knowing which ones would come back whole. Dread was the silence before the bolt. Dread was waiting to become the name that got called.

Now it’s been three days. Well, probably three days. With a clock ticking against your safety, in that dorm without any window, it was hard to understand time passing. You assumed it was three days because you counted the meals. You counted every single thing that could be counted. Seconds, men, door openings. Turn the horror into advantage, into data. Collect, sort, plan. It kept your mind working, and a working mind couldn't fully panic. That was the theory, anyway.

Nine women in total. One man: Bruce. He never left the dorms, even though it seemed he could. You didn't understand his position in this place yet, but the girls clearly liked him and your brain had bigger things to investigate. Eventually you'd ask. Not a priority now.

Seven different faces had appeared at that door calling names. One of them, a guy with shaved hair and sparse tattoos crawling up his head, neck and face, had shown up more times than the others. And every single time, his eyes found you first. He'd stare, and slowly drag his tongue over his lips. Maybe to mock you, maybe to intimidate you, maybe he was truly foaming and eager to put his disgusting hands on you. It twisted your stomach every time.

You wanted to stop looking at the door. But faces were data, so you looked anyway.

The door had opened twenty-five times in three days. Most girls had been called at least twice already. The sound of the door sliding now was scarier than any sound an infected had ever made at you. After all, infected only wanted to kill you, which seemed thousand times better than what was happening here.

You ran the full count again, keeping the map of this place alive in your head. Replaying all the faces. You recalled twenty five men. It wasn’t enough information. Nothing you had was enough yet. Not a single concrete plan came, and you had to exercise every single drop of control to not freak out. Freaking out would not help the plan to come.

Kath had been right. You'd been spared so far. You'd watched the other girls come and go. Once, twice, all of them, and come back emptier every time. But you stayed.

Apparently, until that Damian shows up, you’d be spared. But the anxiety and angst built up, no matter how you tried to keep it away.

Damian was out there hunting Joel and Tommy. If he walked through that door, it wouldn't only mean the start of your nightmare. It would mean the hunt was over. It would mean Tommy was dead, or so far away they couldn't find a trace of him. Both ended the same way: you in those blood stained beds being used as object, just like all these poor souls here.

You sat against the cold wall, knees to your chest, running escape plans desperately in your head and fighting the breath and heart beats that were always on the edge of spiking again. But the plans wouldn't come. God, the plans just wouldn't come. Not good, real ones.

You'd built your whole life on reading people, and this place starved you that exact weapon. You couldn't properly see the guards. Couldn't watch their shifts change, couldn't learn who drank, who got lazy, who hated who. You were an avid reader locked in a room with no books.

So you interrogated the only sources you had. "The lobby," you asked Kath, quiet, on the first night. "Describe it to me. Where the ledger man sits."

Kath answered in pieces. Her eyes went somewhere else while she talked.

"Eat your food, honey," she'd say, and you’d never eat. And that was the end of it.

They all did that. Every time you brought up escape, the room changed. Faces turned away, shoulders came up, someone left the conversation. Hope was treated like threat in here.

Only Bruce listened. He'd sit there with his big arms crossed while you laid out an angle, and he'd say nothing, and then he'd ask one quiet question that put a hole clean through the middle of your plan. He never said yes or no. And you understood what he was doing: he wouldn't let a half-plan leave the room. Because half-plans got people tortured and killed.

You'd caught the way some of the women had started looking at you: Afraid of you and of what your plans might cost them. It occurred to you that if they felt you’d put them in danger, they could do something to you out of survival desperation. So on the second day you stopped talking about escape out loud. You'd think first.

That morning, a girl came back and there was extra food waiting for her, as she'd "done well." Lucy got a clean shirt once, almost new, and held it a moment too long before putting it on. The reward system, you'd figured out by watching. And the horror was watching them be grateful and understanding that the whole machine was built to make gratitude possible.

The only relief in that room had four legs and no idea where they lived. Coco and Mochi worked the dorm like it was their job. Mochi would flop into your lap every now and then and offer you his belly with total confidence, tail thumping the mattress. Coco brought you a piece of rope so chewed it was trash by now, and growled her tiny growl when you took your end, planting her paws, absolutely certain she was winning. For a few minutes at a time, the room got lighter. Women who hadn't spoken all day reached out to pet whichever dog passed.

You buried your fingers in warm fur and let yourself breathe. And you tried very hard not to think about what Bruce had told you these two little hearts were actually for.

---

By the middle of the third day, the horse was struggling hard.

Tommy hadn't slept at all, apart from two or three quick naps that barely lasted one hour when horse needed a break. His eyes burned, his hands had a small tremble in them. He knew the math on this too, and he hated it: the horse needed to stop, and so did he. Resting was necessary. He knew it. But knowing it didn't help. Every minute sitting still felt like a minute handed to the men in that theater.

However, Tommy had pushed the animal harder than he'd promised, and it had given him everything without complaint. But now it needed water and some solid hours of rest, or it wouldn't carry him at all.

"Alright, buddy. Alright." He scanned the map, then the land. There was a river close, off the road to the west. He steered them there.

It was a good river. Narrow, clear over stones, slow at the bend, the afternoon sun sitting on the water. The horse walked straight to it and drank for a long time, thirsty and exhausted.

Tommy dismounted and couldn't stand still.

He paced the bank while the horse drank, jaw tight, doing the math. Less than one day now, if he was lucky and the horse could keep the pace and road continued to have mercy on him. He crouched, splashed water on his face, and stayed down like that, dripping, staring at the current.

"I asked you for one thing." His voice came out low and rough. "One sign. That's all. I asked you plain, and what'd you send me?" He shook his head, laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it. "You wanna guide a man, you guide him. You don't hand him an enigma and watch him walk the wrong goddamn way."

The horse lifted its head and looked at him, water dripping from its mouth, ears turned forward like it was waiting for the rest.

"What?" Tommy said.

The horse blinked slowly and went back to drinking, unimpressed.

“Fine.” He stood up, wiped his face with his forearm and looked up to the sky. “Maybe you were clear as day and I'm just too dumb to read it."

He looked back at the water. And the words stayed inside, because thinking them was one thing, but saying them out loud made the risk real.

If she's okay… if I get there and nobody's touched her, nobody's hurt her, I swear, I'm done wasting this life. You keep her whole and I'll spend it bein' what she always said I was. A light in the dark. For her, and for anybody else still lost out there.

The river kept moving. A bird crossed the water low and didn't stop. The whole world just kept on going.

He started pacing again, because standing still was worse. His head and his shoulder throbbed with every heartbeat. His stomach was a knot that food would help but wouldn't fix completely.

Something caught the sun light in the grass. He almost didn't go look. It was nothing, the country was full of dead little shines anyway. But his feet were already carrying him over.

He expected nothing and found ground swallowing him when he was close enough. His breath stuttered, and he knew even before touching it.

He held it in his own hands once, lowered it over your head and pulled your hair out from under that chain, doing it as slowly as he could to enjoy each second he was this close to you.

He picked it up, and ran his thumb slowly over the firefly etched into the metal. Then he turned it over, because he had to see it to be sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Your name. And under it 00001.

Tommy sank down onto the grass and looked at the river like it had just spoken his language. What were the chances. Right there, in all that open country, bright enough to be found. Out of every river in Pennsylvania, every bend, every mile of bank, his tired horse had walked into this one.

That was your whole way, wasn't it? Leaving a trail for him to find all the way back to you.

And he heard your voice again. You kept leaving pieces behind Tommy, so I can find you in the darkness you lost yourself in.

You'd found him like that, he thought, closing his fist around the pendant.

He looked up at the sky then. Properly, for the first time. Then he tied the broken ends of the chain together in a hard little knot and lowered it around his own neck, dropping it inside his shirt. It came to rest flat against his chest, over his heartbeat.

You found me. Now I find you. Just buy me the hours, little rabbit. I'll do the rest.

---

The bolt slammed open all the way, without warning, and your whole body went rigid against the wall.

Two guards stood in the doorway. One was the tattooed you'd already learned to dread.

The other one was young, you'd never seen before. He was at late twenties at most, with long, dark curls tied back exactly like Tommy's. The face had nothing to do with him, but the hair resemblance itself was enough to make your stomach turn.

“Tan time,” the tattooed one announced, stepping aside with a lazy grin.

The women started getting up. You grabbed the arm of the girl nearest to you, heart already climbing. “What is it? What’s tan time? What do they—”

“Relax.” She gave you a tired little smile and pulled you up by the hand. “They let us go outside. Two, three times a week, if the weather’s nice.”

The women moved toward the door. You moved with them, keeping to the middle of the line, eyes down.

When you passed through the doorway, a hand clamped onto your ass, hard, fingers digging in through your jeans and sliding lower.

“Fresh product needs fresh air,” the tattooed one murmured, hand sliding deeper.

You jerked forward, skin crawling. “Fuck off, your disgusting motherfucker!!” You tried to kick him but he easily dodged.

The young one laughed, low and perverse, making a disgusting sucking sound with his mouth like he was already tasting something. “Oh, it’s so much better when they think they can fight back.” His eyes dragged over you like he was stripping you already.

“When Damian’s done with her,” he said, eyes glued to your body, “… I’m calling dibs on that tight little cunt first.”

“Get in line, kid,” the tattooed one cut in. “I saw her first. Been watching this bitch for three days. You can have whatever’s left after I break her in.”

They talked over your head like you weren’t even there. Two men openly arguing over who would get to rape you first, right in front of you, like it was a casual debate.

Your heart slammed against your ribs. Your hands curled into fists so tight your nails bit into your palms. You wanted to scream. You wanted to fight.

Use your brain. Use your brain.

Bruce planted himself half a step ahead you, before you could think of anything. All of his size suddenly present in the narrow corridor, and he looked at the two men, steady and serious.

The tattooed one held his stare for a second, and he seemed intimidated. The young one had already moved his eyes to the floor. Nobody moved for long seconds. Then the tattooed one huffed. "Move it, lady."

The line moved out through the corridor and up a narrow set of stairs you hadn't seen before. Coco and Mochi came running through the door, certain that whoever reached the garden first won. They threaded through the whole line of women at full speed, between their ankles, and the entire group did the same clumsy dance at once, everybody stepping high and careful.

"Mochi—"

"Watch the—"

The place was a small garden behind the theater. Or it had been one once, closed in by the theater's back wall on one side and high brick on the other three.

Mochi won the race, spun around to celebrate, and was immediately flattened by Coco, who wasn’t aware the race was over. They went down in a rolling tangle of fur, popped up facing wrong directions, located each other with visible surprise, and took off again.

A laugh escaped somewhere to your left. Then another. Lucy had her hand over her mouth. Kath was shaking her head, but her eyes had gone soft.

It was real sunlight and real tiny smiles, for once.

The first thing you did was look for a way out. Before joy, before air, before anything, your eyes swept the walls, the roofline, the drainpipes. The walls were too high and too smooth, the pipes were also unreachable.

You could hear discreet muffled and wet sounds of dormant infected on the outer walls, which made crossing those walls risky.

The dogs kept running in circuits, bumping into each other at every turn, living their whole happy lives inside a nightmare they had no idea existed.

You found a patch of sun and sat. The warmth soaked into you. The women scattered across the little decadent garden, each finding her own spot.

It took you a while to notice Bruce. He was standing close, arms crossed, his big frame angled so that he could scan you, the guards, and the door all at once. The other women were spread across the whole garden, and he'd left them all their space.

But he stayed near you and stared back at the guards by the door.

The two men were leaning against the wall, smoking, eyes locked on you like you were meat. The young one smirked when he noticed you looking. He took a slow drag, then spoke loud enough you could hear.

“Can’t wait to hear how she’ll sound when I make her choke on it.”

“Fuck that.” The tattooed one snorted. “I told you I’ll get her first. I’ve been hard for three days thinking about that ass.”

You couldn't hear one more word of it. The vomit came up and you swallowed it back down, throat burning. Bruce stood there like a useless wall. Big enough to keep them from crossing the garden, not big enough to make them stop talking.

You crossed the space on trembling legs and sat down next to Kath, face white, tears standing in the corners of your eyes without falling.

She didn't need to ask what they'd said. She just shifted closer and put her arm around your shoulders. "Hey. Hey. Breathe," she said quietly. "They can't do anything to you. Okay? Don't worry. There's a rule."

You steadied your stomach and wiped your eyes with the back of your wrist.

"A rule? How so?"

"They can't just take us. Not the workers." She said it flat. "If they want time with one of us, they pay. Same as any client. Damian doesn't run a free bar for his own men."

You stared at her. "You say it like it's a fucking good company policy."

"It's not." Kath held your eyes. "It's disgusting. But it's a fence, honey. And in here, you learn to count fences."

The panic came up your chest anyway, fast, faster than you could sort it.

"We need to escape, Kath. I can't— I can't go through this, I can't, please," Your voice cracked in the middle. "Please."

Kath's arm wrapped around you. She didn't say it's okay, because it wasn't, and she was too honest to say it. She didn't say you'll get used to it, because she remembered being the one saying I can't, once, to some other woman. She just held you and looked at the wall in front of you both.

"I know," she said finally. Quiet. "I know, honey."

Your eyes found Bruce again standing in the middle of the garden with his arms crossed, doing his strange, silent job. The only person in this whole building who even listened when you talked about escaping.

"What's with him?" you asked. "Is he one of them? Is he one of us? I don't understand what that fucker is."

"Bruce is a good man. We owe him a lot."

"How so? Please, enlighten me, because I don't understand anything." You gestured at him with your chin. "He's strong. He's not afraid of them, they're careful around him. If he's on our side, why can't he help us?”

"It's complicated."

"I have time." You started to push yourself up. "Or I can ask him directly—"

Kath's hand closed around your arm and pulled you back down. You sat. She was quiet for a moment, deciding where to start.

"Okay. Long story short." She kept her voice low, and her eyes stayed on Bruce while she talked. "Bruce is Patricia and Damian's brother."

Your stomach dropped. "What?"

"Youngest of the three. They started out together just as raiders when outbreak came, them and a group. Taking supplies, holding roads. Ugly, but ordinary ugly." She paused.

"Then the business started… shifting. And when Bruce understood what his brother and sister were turning it into, he confronted them. Tried everything. Couldn't move them an inch. So he decided to leave."

She let out a slow breath. "And then he did the math that ruined his life. He realized leaving wouldn't stop anything. Women would still be taken. The rooms would still fill. The only thing that would change is that he wouldn't see it." Kath's jaw tightened. "So he stayed. He told them: if you're doing this, I'm the one who handles the women. And he's been standing in that spot ever since."

You looked across the garden at him. Big, still, patient. Guarding a cage he hated.

"I can't give you the details, I wasn't here yet, and Bruce doesn't talk about it. We only ever got pieces. But somewhere in there, it broke all the way, the story goes he tried to kill them both. His own brother and sister." She shook her head slowly. "Couldn't do it. And here's the strange part: they couldn't kill him either. After everything. Whatever family is, it wouldn't finish dying in any of the three of them."

"So they made a deal," you said.

"They made a deal." Kath nodded. "He stays. He gets power over everything that happens below the stage. Nobody starves. Nobody gets beaten. No employee touches us for free." She turned her head and finally looked at you. "He couldn't stop the machine. So he crawled inside it and started filing down the teeth."

"That doesn't make Bruce a good man," you said.

"No," Kath agreed, simply. "Doesn't make him a monster either. He's a man who found out he couldn't save anybody, and decided to stay anyway and make it hurt less. It's not much." Her voice dropped. "You have no idea, yet, how much not much is worth in here."

She was quiet a moment. Then, almost to herself: "He did try, once. To get a group of girls out. What happened after was an atrocity that—"

"Please." You closed your eyes. "I don't want to know."

“He’s being consuming himself in guilty for the after math of every failed escape he tried to organize or help. I know he didn’t stop planning, I also know he was more relieved than grieving knowing about Patricia’s death. He couldn’t do it, but I think most part of him was happy someone did.”

Kath squeezed your shoulder once, and before she could reply, a sound disturbed the sunny, peaceful silence. The first crack was distant. A few heads turned, curious, not alarmed yet. Gunshots weren't rare in this world. Somebody was always shooting at something, somewhere.

The dormant infected started to wake up on the other side of the walls.

Then three more shots. Fast. Evenly spaced, like someone working down a list. Every head in the garden snapped up at once. The dogs frozen mid-run, ears up. Then what was silence was all noise. A scream started somewhere high on the far side of the theater, up on the roof, a man's voice, panicked, yelling something you couldn't make out, while the dogs started barking and wet organic sounds cracked all around the building, now furiously.

Another shot and the scream stopped, abruptly and mid-word.

Bruce was already moving between the women and the door without a word. The two guards by the door had come off the wall, cigarettes dropped, rifles up, eyes sweeping the rooftops for something to point at.

The garden door burst open. A third guard, out of breath, white-faced.

"Roof's down!" he shouted. "The roof's down, all five! It's a sniper, a fucking sniper!"

Your heart did something no one around you would have understood. A sniper. Five rooftop guards, five shots, no misses. You knew exactly two people who shot like that.

Marcus. Marcus could make those shots in his sleep, and Marcus would not be alone. Which meant Frank. They'd found you, they'd come back with help, they were here.

Or…

Your mind stumbled over the other name. Someone else was here, someone who was even a better shooter.

Either way, somebody was here. For you. You had to bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep the relief off your face, because everyone around you was turning gray with fear and you were standing in the middle of them fighting a smile.

And then came the other sound.

Distant. But you knew it. Everyone knew it. Metal shrieking. A chain giving way. And then the wet clicking that had lived behind the walls rose all at once: dozens of throats opening together, moving.

"The gates," Kath whispered beside you. Her face had gone gray. "God. They released the infected."

"Inside!" the young guard screamed, throwing the door wide. "Everybody inside, move!”

The women ran. The line crushed itself through the doorway and down the narrow stairs, elbows and shoulders and someone crying, and the guards were shoving from behind, and Bruce's voice cut over all of it, low and steady like a hand on the group's back: "To the dorms, girls! Go! Stay together!"

"Bruce!" Kath grabbed his sleeve on the stairs, her voice cracking. "Don't go up there. Please. Stay with us—"

"Can't." He pried her fingers loose, gentle, already moving. "If they get past the lobby, that dorm's a trap with all of you in it. I hold the them, you stay alive." He pushed her toward the corridor. "Go."

You ran at the back of the group, on purpose. Because you had no intention of being locked in that dorm. Every cell in you was pulling the other way, toward the gunfire, toward whoever was up there tearing this place apart.

Behind you, in the garden, the dogs were barking. Not scared, but brave. Two tiny bodies barking at the chaos like they could take it.

"Coco! Mochi!" Kelly turned and threw herself against the current, clawing back up toward the garden door. "The dogs, please, someone, the dogs!"

The tattooed guard caught her around the waist, lifted her off her feet like she was nothing, and carried her down the corridor while she screamed and hit at his arms. He shoved her through the dorm door first.

The noises were closer now, coming from the lobby upstairs. The third guard was already gone, sprinting towards it.

The young one held the dorm door, shoving women through. "In, in, get the fuck in!"

You were last. You stopped at the threshold and caught Bruce's arm as he turned for the stairs, and you whispered, fast, only for him:

"It's my people." His eyes snapped to yours. "Bruce, they came for me. Don't hurt them. Please. Help me get the dogs safe and get to them, and we all walk out of here! You, the girls, the dogs,"

"Dorm," he said. "Now."

The young guard's hand closed on your shoulder and shoved you through before you could fight back, and the door slammed, locked.

Dust shook loose with every impact from above. The women had pressed into the far corner, tracking the boots and the gunfire by sound. Somebody was praying. Somebody was shushing the one who was praying. Kelly was still calling the dogs.

You were at the door, both fists against it, screaming uselessly toward the stairs and the lobby and whoever was up there.

"I’m here! I’m down here!! I’m here!”

Kath pulled at your shoulders. "Honey, stop, they can't hear."

A minute passed. Maybe two. And among all the noises, you hear the bolt moving.

Your heart stopped. The door was opening. You stepped back, and hope rose in you fast and stupid.

The tattooed man filled the doorway, pushing Bruce inside, who was stumbling and bleeding from his head, unsteady.

The perverse eyes found you immediately. He didn't look at the others or said anything. He closed his hand around your arm, and hauled you outside the dorm.

"No!" Kath lunged. "No! Leave her!"

He slammed the door on the screaming women and locked it back.

The young guard was waiting in the corridor, rifle slung, not fighting anybody. The two of them looked entirely too calm for a building that was on war.

"Everyone's losing their minds up there," the young one said, falling in beside you as the tattooed man dragged you toward the stairs. "Over what? One guy. Maybe two."

"Twenty of us," the tattooed one agreed. "Twenty guns and a street full of freaks doing half the work. It'll be over soon, we need to hurry." He glanced down at you, gave your arm a shake. "See, doll? Nothing to worry about. We're gonna go somewhere quiet and let the boys handle the pest control."

"And honestly," the young one said, leaning in too close to your face, walking backward in front of you with a grin, "there's somethin' about doin' it while the world's endin' outside. Gets the blood up. You'll see how good it feels—"

You spat in his face. It landed across his cheek and eye, and for one satisfying second his grin died completely.

Then his fist came around and the world went white.

You feel yourself hit the wall, the corridor tilting, something hot running down through your eyebrow and into your lashes. Your cheekbone was already swelling; you could feel it rising under your eye.

"You stupid!" The tattooed man shoved the young one back into the opposite wall, forearm across his chest. "Look at her face! Look at it! How the hell do we explain that to Damian? Marked product, you brainless shit!"

"She spat in my—"

"I don't care if she pissed in your canteen." He moved and hauled you up off the wall by the arm. "You wait. You hear me kid? I've been here longer, I get her first. That's how it works."

The young one wiped his face, sulking like a boy denied a turn. "...Fine. I'll be waiting in the room next door. Call me when you're done." A beat, and the grin crawled back. "Don't wear her out."

The tattooed man pulled you up stairs, the younger followed behind. Your legs weren't working right, the punch had scrambled something, the steps kept moving under your feet, and he just dragged you through it, one floor up and away from the war.

You kicked, twisted, slammed your free elbow into his ribs, clawed at the hand locked around your upper arm until your nails tore skin. He didn’t even grunt. Every time you managed to dig your heels in, he simply yanked harder and kept moving.

“Let me go! Let me fucking go!”

Halfway up, an explosion rocked the building.

The gunfire stuttered and he stopped. He stood still on the stairs, head tilted, listening. For three full seconds you watched him actually consider it.

Then he shrugged. “It might just be one shot hitting the ammo crates. Dumb assholes.”

The upper corridor was empty, the battle a floor below and muffled. He kicked open the door at the end of the hall and pulled you through, and the younger man moved to the room beside, still protesting.

“Damian's room.” The man said, extending his palm showing a neat, improvised bedroom.

You screamed again, full-throated, thrashing hard enough that your shoulder nearly dislocated. “Help! I’m here! Somebody, please!”

He shoved you inside. You caught yourself on the bed frame, blood dripping off your eyebrow.

“Don’t be a brat. See how good I am to you?” He shut the door with his heel. “Best room in the house. First-class treatment.”

You backed against the far wall, chest heaving, heart slamming hard. You screamed past him, through the walls, down through the floor to whoever was carving their way through this place.

“Help! I’m here! I’m here!!”

The tattooed man reached behind his head and pulled his shirt off, unhurried. The ink across his chest and stomach shifted with the movement.

“Scream all you want, doll.” Below, the building shook again in another small explosion. He smiled. “See? Everybody’s busy.”

“No!” You planted your feet. He yanked you off them like you weighed nothing. “No! Let me go, let me go you fucker!”

Below you, the gunfire had become continuous, rapid, overlapping and closer. He paused for a moment. Head tilted, listening, doing his lazy arithmetic. “Huh.”

“They’ll kill you,” you spat, twisting, throwing your whole weight against his grip. “I’ll tell Damian what you did.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing. Boss ain’t comin’ back. Four days late, radio silence. Everybody’s thinkin’ it, I’m just the first one honest enough to act on it.”

You fought harder. You raked your nails down his forearm, drew blood, kicked at his knee. His patience snapped.He slammed you face-first into the mattress. Before you could push up, he had a rope in his hands. He wrenched your arms behind your back, cinched the rope tight around your wrists in three brutal loops, and yanked the knot until the fibers bit into your skin.

You thrashed, screaming into the sheets, legs kicking uselessly. He just put a knee in the middle of your back and kept tying.

“There,” he said. The man twisted you roughly onto your back. “I want to see this pretty face when I’m inside you.”

He settled his full weight on top of you, already hard through his jeans. The screams died in your throat, you were panicking so hard the sounds wouldn’t come anymore. Your heart was racing so violently it felt like it was going to tear itself apart.

The noise from downstairs had smoothed out gradually, but neither of you noticed. You were too deep in panic, and he was too delighted, grinding against you like an animal.

He gave a long, wet lick up the side of your face, pushing his tongue into your ear, invading it in slow, disgusting circles while one hand fumbled the buttons of his jeans.

Your vision darkened at the edges quickly. You thought, with a strange, detached relief, At least I’ll pass out. At least I won’t have to feel it.

“Yeah, that’s it, be still and behave so I don’ t need to hurt you, doll.”

And just as he finished the sentence, the weight was gone. For a second you thought you finally passed out. But the next second his head snapped backward like something had hooked it, his whole frame ripped up and off of you so fast the air rushed cold against your skin where he'd been.

Your vision had black spots swallowing the room, your heart tearing itself apart behind the scar. All you registered was shapes. The man's silhouette suspended above you, arched backward at a wrong angle.

And then a line opened across his throat.

You didn't see the blade. You only saw the result: his neck simply coming apart, and then the metallic warmth hit you. Across your face, your chest, the sheets, raining down on you while the man made a sound you'd never heard a person make. A wet and shocked gurgle drowning in itself.

His body lurched sideways off the bed. Through the closing tunnel of your vision you watched him stumble, hands flying up to his own throat like he could hold himself together, eyes enormous, still trying to understand what had happened to him.

A shape followed him down. It didn't hesitate, didn't speak, it just went down with the man to the floor, and then the sounds started. Fist on bone. Once. Twice. Three times. The rhythm of it steady and terrible, six, seven, someone hitting a dead man like the dying hadn't been enough and each punch was a debt being charged with interests. You lost count. The room was nothing but that sound of broken bones and flesh and your own heartbeat screaming in your ears.

Your vision started coming back, you blinked the blood out of your eyelashes.

And you looked down at the shape kneeling over the body.

You can see dark curls, tied back, a few strands shaken loose, falling forward. You couldn't see it all. Couldn't trust what you saw.

Hope rose and stopped halfway, suspended in the air. You blinked hard, trying to place these curls. Were them the curls of the man you loved? Or of the man who was supposed to be waiting in the room next door?

You keep acknowledging. Broad shoulders, working with every blow. A shirt dark with blood. Your sight slowly coming back fully.

Then, your eyes found.

The cowboy boots, planted on the floor, holding him steady to wreck the dead one beneath him. Your lips moved before you had air back to spend on them. No sound came out. You tried again, and it came out broken tiny and disbelieving:

"...T-Tommy!?"

The fist stopped.

His head came up. And he turned to you, chest heaving, blood to his elbows, eyes feral and wild, finding your face. The angry eyes slowly softened, scanning you.

Tommy Miller.

He came for you. He found you. The man who would refuse to die until he saved you.

He was here.

The rage left him all at once, like something switched off. He wiped his hands on his jeans, like he couldn't touch you with those hands. Then he crossed to you.

You had pushed yourself up to the edge of the bed, still shaking, your heart slamming so hard it hurt. He leveled his eyes to yours, and his hands came up and cradled your face carefully, thumbs at your cheekbones, avoiding the swelling under your eye he'd already mapped.

Then he pulled you into him, arms wrapping around you, one hand pressed flat between your shoulder blades and the other cupping the back of your head. His whole body was trembling.

"God, I found you." he breathed into your hair. "I got you. I got you, baby."

"Tommy? Tommy?" It came out barely a whisper, your lungs still not working right, your chest heaving in short, useless pulls. "Is it you?... is it really?"

He broke the hug just enough to hold you by the shoulders carefully, and looked at you, and his face was terrified and relieved at the same time, his eyes taking rapid inventory, the cut eyebrow, the swelling, your ragged breathing.

"Breathe," he said. "Hey. Hey. I’m here now. Look at me. Breathe."

You tried. It kept catching. Your heart was still throwing itself against your ribs.

His hands tightened on your shoulders, and the fear in his voice was naked now, nothing hiding it. "Breathe baby, breathe. Tell me what to do. Tell me how I help you. Whatever it is. Tell me what you need."

"Your heart." You could barely get it out. "Let... let me hear your heart."

He pulled you up off the bed and into him, one arm banding around your back, his other hand guiding your head gently, turning you until your ear pressed flat against his chest, right over it. Then he just held you there. Standing in the middle of that terrible room, in the blood and the wreckage, holding you like the building wasn't burning under you both.

His heart was racing too, he was as wrecked as you were. But steady in its rhythm even at speed.

"I got you," he murmured into your hair, his hand starting to move, slow, cradling through the strands. "I got you, I got you now, darlin'. Ain't nobody touchin' you. Ain't nobody ever touchin' you again. Just breathe with me. That's it. That's my girl."

You snuggled deeper into his chest, eyes closing, and listened.

And you knew. Past the panic, past the disbelief, past everything. You knew, just as you knew the exact sound of his voice, you knew this particular sound of this heart beat with its particular stubbornness.

"It's you," you whispered against his shirt. "It's really you."

"It's me, little rabbit." His lips pressed to the top of your head and stayed there. "It's me. I'm here."

You focused on it. The beat. The rise and fall of his chest under your cheek. And you hung your broken rhythm on his, borrowing his lungs, borrowing his heart, letting your body remember how it’s supposed to do. You stayed like that, it that little bubble of illusional peace. His hand in your hair. His heart in your ear. The war below fading to something that belonged to another world.

Slowly, beat by beat, breath by breath, your heart came down off the ledge. You pulled away from his chest and looked at his face, for the first time with your sight fully back.

He was covered in blood, most of it dried dark and days old, some of it fresh. There was a split on his forehead, half-healed. His eyes were exhausted in a way you'd never seen on him, not in the worst of the road.

His hands came back up to your face.

"I love you." He said, not wasting a single second more. "I love you. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry—"

You kissed him, not letting you finish. And it wasn't like any kiss you'd shared before, not the stolen ones, not the angry ones. This one was tender and desperate at the same time, both of you sinking into each other like the kiss was the air you'd been missing for days. His hand slid into your hair, and you drank each other slow and deep, trembling. Neither of you was in a hurry. Neither of you could stop.

When you parted, your foreheads stayed together.

Then Tommy swallowed. And you felt him gather the courage before you heard it.

"Did they hurt you?" His voice came out careful, almost afraid of its own question. His thumbs went still on your cheeks. "Did they... did they touch you?"

You shook your head. "No. Nobody touched me."

He scanned your face the way he scanned a dangerous road. He looked at your eyes, deep, looking for the lie you might be telling to spare him. Then your mouth. Then the cut on your eyebrow. Then the light purple, swollen cheekbone, and his jaw flexed hard when he reached it. "You sure?" His voice cracked at the edge. "You can tell me. Whatever it is, whatever happened, you can tell me,"

"Tommy." You stopped him, holding his gaze so he could see all of it. "Nobody touched me. You arrived just in time. The only thing I got is this black eye, I promise you. Nobody did anything to me." You look at the disfigured body on the floor. You felt the smile come up small and shy, unstoppable, looking back at him. "You stopped it before it could happen. You came, and you saved me."

Something broke open in his face. Tommy dropped to his knees in front of you. Tears pooled on the corners of his eyes. His hands lowered to your hips, holding you soft, and he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against your belly, and breathed deep.

He wasn't late He was relieved, completely, maybe for the first time in days. Maybe for the first time in years.

For the first time ever he wasn’t late. He had been fast enough. His hands had been enough. For once, God had let him arrive while he could still do something about it.

He couldn't say any of that. There were no words in him for it. So he just knelt there in the wreckage, forehead pressed to you, holding your hips like an anchor, and breathed quietly against your belly while the tension of four years left his body one breath at a time.

“God! I was so scared, I— I should’ve never—”

"Hey, you found me, and we’re both fine," you whispered back to him. “that’s all that matters now.”

He tilted his head back and looked up at you.

The day was dying in the window behind you. The sun had dropped low enough to come straight through the glass, and it poured in gold around your body. The rest of the room stayed dark: The blood, the wreckage, the whole ruined building, all of it fell away into shadow, and you stood inside the one column of light the world had left.

"We’re together now," he said softly. Like he'd been searching a lot longer than three days. “I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

You smiled down at him, and the light moved with you.

“I love you too, Tommy Miller.”

At this moment, he knew he was never going to be lost in darkness again. All he had to do was look up at you, shining for him.

He rose to his feet and kissed you again, softer this time, slower, one hand cradling your jaw. When you parted, his thumb brushed featherlight beneath your bad eye, tracing the edge of the swelling without touching it.

"Who did this to you?"

His eyes cut to the body on the floor. "Was it him?"

You shook your head no.

Something registered behind his eyes. "We need to leave, quick.” Then he turned you gently and started working the rope at your wrists, talking fast while his fingers picked at the knots. “The shootin' hit grenade crates or somethin', fire's spreadin' through and it ain't stoppin'. This whole theater's gonna burn."

The first loop came loose.

"And they had a full damn army of infected penned out there. The man barricaded the front, but some freaks already squeezed through. It's a matter of time before all of 'em are inside, burning with the whole building" The second loop. "You know if there’s an exit out the back? 'Cause we ain't leavin' through that entry."

The last coil dropped from your wrists, and the blood rushed back into your hands, stinging. You turned to face him, rubbing the rope marks.

"They have a garden, all the way in the back. But the walls are high." You were already running it in your head, the map you'd built in three days of counting everything. "There's a ladder on the stage, though. I saw it. If we take it with us, maybe we can make it work. What do you think?"

"I think it's the only way." He checked the gun, jaw set. "It has to work."

You both moved to the door, his hand brushed yours. “Your hand is fine?” He asked quickly before fully holding it.

“Yes, almost a fully healed—”

"They're all dead!" the young man appeared screaming as the door swung, wild-eyed, come running to warn his partner. "They're all dead, the lobby's gone, we gotta—"

He stopped. His brain caught up with his eyes: the tattooed man in a lake of his own blood on the floor. A stranger painted red from elbows to jaw.

His gun started coming up. Tommy hit him before it got halfway. The two of them slammed into the wall, the gun firing once into the ceiling, plaster dropping. Tommy drove a knee into the man's stomach, wrenched the gun out of his grip, and leveled it the man's chest.

The young one froze, hands rising. And the urge rose in you before Tommy could press the trigger.

"Tommy. He's the one who hurt me… and was planning to be the next assaulting me."

You said it with huge delight. Because you knew exactly what would happen now, and you’re not a single inch sorry.

Tommy looked at the man, then at the gun at his own hand, briefly. He rolled his neck once, and for one more second he kept the gun trained on the man's chest.

Then he moved, quicker than anyone could expect. The gun dropped and he grabbed the young man by his hair with both hands, driving his head into the solid wood of the bedframe. Once. Twice. The crack of it went through the room. He looked like a feral dog, off the chain and obeying, precisely, the order its owner had just given.

The young one crumpled, eyes rolling, hands pawing at nothing.

"Nuh-uh." Tommy crouched. "You don't get to pass out yet."

The punch came and you saw it happen: the man's jaw leaving its place, the whole lower half of his face sliding sideways.

"Still there, motherfucker?"

You heard the man try to answer a shapeless babbling. Then the second punch, on the same broken jaw. Your hands came up and covered your eyes.

Through your fingers you saw the man sagging, sliding toward the dark, and Tommy shook him once, hard, like waking a drunk.

"Don't you dare die yet."

Then he pulled the blade from his belt, pressed the cold edge against the man’s throat, and pushed it in slowly. The knife sank inch by inche with a wet, tearing sound, parting skin and muscle deliberately. Tommy held him there, fisted in his hair, and watched every second of it. He drank in the man’s pain, not rushing it, until the blade was fully buried and the man was finally and completely still.

He cleaned the blade on his jeans, slid it back into his belt, and extended his hand to you.

"Let's go."

You took it.

The corridor was already changing. A light smoke had found the upper floor.

You came down into the auditorium, hearing the building dying, cracking and popping. And beneath all of it, constant now, the slamming: Fists that weren't fists, throwing themselves against the barricaded front doors.

The place you'd walked through three days ago was gone. The stage furniture was overturned. The improvised structure separating into sections collapsed. Fire had gotten into the piles of junk and crates and was spreading fast, climbing whatever it touched, and as you watched, the great curtains, the last magnificent thing in the building, caught at the hem. The flame ran up them in seconds, graceful, almost beautiful.

At the main doors, the barricade was failing. Through the cracks you could see the infected, twisting and tangled in the gaps, arms passing through, faces pressing into spaces. Dozens more slammed against the other side in waves, the whole wall of furniture shuddering with each hit. A few had already gotten in somewhere: one burned in the aisle, still trying to walk. Others were crouched over the dead, too busy to look up.

And the dead were everywhere.

You slowed. You couldn't help it.

Sprawled across the seats. Folded over the stage edge. Piled at the lobby doors where they'd tried to hold the line. Faces you’ve seen, faces you catalogued.

"Come on, baby, we need to move fast," Tommy said, pulling gently.

You counted. You needed to be sure. Eight... twelve... fifteen... eighteen. Eighteen on this floor. Two more back in that bedroom. Twenty. Five on the rooftop. The count matched. Every single one.

"Jesus, Tommy." Your voice came out small under the roar of the fire. "You… you killed them all? By yourself?"

He'd spotted the ladder, lifted it one-handed, and came back for you, taking your hand again.

"Let's go. Come."

You searched his face as you moved. You knew this man, you knew what killing did to him, the guilt that ate him from the inside every time. You looked for it now. The regret. The pain.

It wasn't there. Just focus, and the fire's light moving on his face, and his hand tight around yours.

Twenty five men. And he'd walk through twenty-five more if needed. You had never felt more powerful or safer in your entire life.

"Which direction's the garden?" he asked, scanning.

"We need to go downstairs first, Tommy. There's more people."

He stopped. And for one second you watched him get ready to say no it ain't safe, we go now.

The calculation flashed across his face. He blinked. Swallowed it.

"Show me the way." He shifted the ladder on his good shoulder.

You ran for the stairs, down into the corridor where the smoke was already arriving ahead of you. You pointed at the door and Tommy threw the bolt.

All faces turned to you at once, pressed together at the back wall, arms around each other, eyes huge. Bruce was on the floor by the door, holding a fabric against his head.

"We're leaving!" Your voice cracked out of you louder than you knew you had. "We’re free, but we need to move fast! Everybody up, now! To the garden, go, go!"

Nobody moved immediately, they stared at you like you were speaking another language.

"The building's burning!" You storm in and grabbed the nearest arm, Kelly’s, and pulled her toward the door. "The infected are breaking in! There's no more guards, there's no more anybody, but we have to move now!!"

Kath got there first. "You heard her!" She started hauling women up by the wrists, shoving them at the door. Bruce joined. "Up! Move! Go, go!"

And then they broke loose all at once, grabbing each other, grabbing nothing, spilling out into the corridor in a stumbling line.

"Stay low!" Tommy's voice, over everything. "Hold onto each other and move!"

The line rushed the corridor, coughing, hands on shoulders, a chain of women running through smoke toward the stairs that led up to the garden.

And then, far, from the direction of the auditorium, came a sound.

Wood. Crashes. Screams.

The barricade was down. Everybody understood and moved even faster.

You burst into the garden. Tommy ran the ladder up against the back wall and it fell short. He cursed under his breath, already looking for another angle.

"There!" You pointed at the other wall. "The pipes!" A run of old iron piping bracketed to the brick. "Put the ladder next to them, the pipes take us the rest of the way!" He didn't waste a second.

"I go first," Bruce jerked his chin up. "check the other side and help 'em over and."

Bruce went up fast, gripped the pipes, hauled himself to the top of the wall, and looked over. A second stretched. Then his voice came back down, and it carried hope.

"It's clear! No infected on this side!" He straddled the wall, anchoring himself. "And it's lower over here! Jumpable! Careful landing and nobody gets hurt. Come! Come!" He waved them up hard.

Kath reached the ladder, and Tommy pressed a gun into her hands. "Anything moves on the other side of that wall, you shoot it."

She nodded once, jammed it into her waistband, and climbed. Bruce caught her wrist at the pipes and guided her over the top, and then she was gone, and you heard her land, and you heard nothing bad after, and the line surged forward.

One by one they went up. All of them have a bit of hesitance or difficulty moving through the pipes, making them slower. Bruce hauled each one over the lip.

Kelly was pacing the garden, spinning, checking behind the raised beds, her voice climbing toward panic.

"Coco! Mochi!" She tore through the overgrown plants with both hands. "They're not here. They were here! Oh my god, where are they?? they were right here," Two other women broke from the line to look, calling, whistling, checking the corners. Nothing.

"They must have gotten inside," someone said.

Tommy looked at you, confused.

“Two small dogs,” You said back.

Kelly was already moving. She hit the building door and yanked it open and smoke poured out, and everybody screamed at once Kelly, no, Kelly!

"We can't leave them behind!" She was crying and wrapping her jacket around her face. "They must be in the kitchen, that's the only place they'd run to."

"I'm coming with you," Miriam said, jumping down from the ladder queue.

The garden dissolved into shouting, everyone talking over everyone, the fire, the infected are inside, you'll die in there and Kelly stood in the smoking doorway with her jacket around her face, shaking her head at all of it, one foot already inside.

"Give it," Tommy had already stepped in, asking for her jacket.

Kelly looked at him for a second. She put the jacket in his hand.

“It’s the door right beside the dorm.”

He wrapped it around his own face, and looked up at the wall where Bruce sat straddled.

"Make sure they're all safe till I'm back."

"Tommy!" you yelled.

He looked back at you.

And everything you wanted to say jammed in your throat at once. Stay. Please stay. Don’t risk yourself. You swallowed it. Because this was the man, the real Tommy, and God help you, you had fallen in love with exactly that.

"Take care, please!" you shouted instead, voice breaking. "Be fast!"

He nodded once and entered.

You turned back to the wall, steadying the ladder, helping the women up one by one, watching Bruce swing them over the top. Kelly went up second to last, sobbing, looking back at the door the whole way.

And halfway up the pipes, she stopped.

"Kelly?" Bruce leaned down from the wall. "Kelly, come on. Three more feet. Look at me."

She didn't move. Her hands were locked around the iron, knuckles white, her whole body shaking, face pressed to the brick. Frozen by the height, by the dogs, by everything at once.

"Kelly. Hey. Eyes on me, girl. You climbed the hard part already." Kelly could not move.

Behind it was just you, Miriam and Tommy, somewhere inside a burning building.

Come back, Tommy. Come back.

Above you, Bruce shifted. He laid himself chest-flat along the top of the wall, still straddling it to anchor, and stretched his arm down as far as it would go.

"Hey. Kelly. Look at me." His voice came down calm, the calm he wore like a coat. "You jump. I grab your hand and I pull. That's it. Everybody made it."

"I can't." Kelly was crying openly now, backing off the ladder. "I can't do that, I can't, I'll fall—"

"You can." Bruce didn't raise his voice. "You climb one more step, you jump, you trust me." He flexed his fingers open.

And that was when the door slammed open.

Tommy came out of the smoke, a dog under each arm. He shook his head hard, whipping the jacket off his face and making it fall to the grounf, and the sight of him stopped your heart in the best way. The lower half of his face was still clean, framed by a forehead and temples gone gray with soot, his eyes cutting through all of it, already sweeping the garden, already counting who was left.

The poor dogs were terrified, ears flat, pressed into him. But they were fine. And you stood there at the bottom of the ladder, in the middle of the end of everything, and you couldn't move, because he had never looked more human and more handsome than right now: Covered in ash and blood, carrying two shaking little dogs. More himself, more perfect than you had ever seen him.

He crossed the garden fast, reached the ladder, and his eyes found yours to say something urgent, and stopped. Because you were looking at him like that. Both your hands had come up on their own, one settling on each little fluffy head, caressing soot-dusted fur, and you never once looked down at them. You just looked at him. Mesmerized. Completely, hopelessly melted, everything you felt sitting undisguised on your face because you had no way to hide any of it.

Tommy blinked. The concern on his face cracked a bit. The corner of his mouth pulled up, shy and boyish and proud, the smile of a man who'd just been caught being exactly who you always swore he was.

"...What?" he said.

"Nothing." You smiled, eyes shining, thumbs still moving over two trembling little heads. "Nothing, Tommy."

"See?" Bruce yelled down at Kelly. "They're fine! But if you want your dogs, you got to open the way for them!"

Kelly nodded, wiped her face, and took a deep breath.

And then the door exploded with impact. Not open, not open yet. But the whole frame jumped in the wall, wood cracking, hinges screaming. Then again. And again. Dozens of bodies, slamming from the other side, and through the gaps you could hear them now, close, wet, frantic.

"Fuck!" five voices at once.

Kelly jumped. Bruce caught her and hauled her over. "Miriam! Now!"

Miriam threw herself at the ladder, climbing badly, sobbing, slipping on every rung.

“Focus, Miriam!” You looked at the door. It faltered. A panel splitting down the middle, a gray arm already worming through the gap.

Tommy pushed you toward the ladder with the side of his body. "Go. Go!"

But the infected were a millisecond from breaking in and your brain ran the whole scene forward in less than that: They tear the door down. Miriam is still on the ladder, struggling and shaking. Tommy drop the dogs to unsling his rifle, and he's good, he's the best you've ever seen, but there are too many. The infected take Miriam off the ladder. They take the dogs. They take Tommy, shooting until the end, and then they take you for last, but you get to watch all of it first.

Unless… Unless you’re there.

So you ran. To the door.

"No!” Tommy's voice tore behind you. "What are you— No!"

You reached it at the exact moment it came down. The door burst and they poured through, dozens of them clustered, runners with smoke rising off their clothes, faces ruined, mouths open.

And they stopped.

The whole front rank of them, frozen a body's length from you, heads jerking, tilting, that stutter you knew by heart. The ones behind piled into the ones in front and they stopped too, the entire pack stalling in the doorway, twitching, hissing, confused. Evaluating you. The way they always did.

"What the fuck—" Bruce's voice cracked from the top of the wall. Miriam reached the top. Bruce hauled her over in one pull and spun back, arm down, ready. "What is, what is she? What’s happening?!"

"Tommy, go!" you screamed, not taking your eyes off them. "Climb!"

"Not without you! Get back here, you go first—"

"You know this is the only way Tommy!" Your voice came out steady. "Forty seconds! We have forty seconds!"

Thirty-nine, you started, out loud, eyes locked on the many twitching faces. Thirty-eight. Thirty-seven.

One single beat where you felt him understand. "Shit. Shit." And then, he moved.

Tommy hit the ladder with both dogs still in his arms, climbing awkwardly, boots slamming the rungs quickly. At the top he lifted Coco one-handed. Bruce took the little body and simply tossed her over the wall, then women's voices catching her on the far side. Mochi went the same way, paddling the air, caught.

Twenty-seven. Twenty-six.

Then Bruce gripped Tommy's forearm and pulled, but he was too heavy. He was pulling with both hands now, teeth bared, dragging him up inch by inch.

Twenty. Nineteen.

Tommy grabbed the wall's edge to haul himself and was able to help Bruce just enough before his shoulder finally quit and he grunted in pain.

The runner closest to you jerked its head. Its fingers flexed.

Eleven. Ten.

Tommy made it over the top and stayed there, straddling the wall beside Bruce, chest heaving, arm hanging wrong, eyes on you, and both of them screaming now, two voices on top of each other:

"Come on, run, come on!"

The pack was changing. The stillness draining out of them, the twitching getting faster, heads snapping instead of tilting, the confusion burning off like fog. One of them took a step. Small. Testing.

You ran.

Six. Five.

You flew across the garden and hit the ladder as the counting collapsed. Two. And behind you the world unfroze smoothly. One. The shrieking exploded and the ground drummed with footfalls, and you reached the top rung and leaped for the pipes, hands catching iron.

"Kick the ladder!" Bruce and Tommy roared together.

You kicked. The ladder swung away and went down, into the first wave arriving beneath you, squealing, hammering, piling onto each other, fingers raking the brick inches under your boots.

You extended your arms. Two hands caught it, his and Bruce's, at the same second, and they hauled you up so fast your feet left the wall, over the edge, out of the reach of everything below.

The jump down was clumsy and nobody cared. You hit the ground one after another, and for the first minutes there was nothing but gasping, chests heaving. Everyone watching the top of the brick. Waiting for fingers. Waiting for the shrieking to come over.

It didn't. The wall held. The squealing on the other side slowly folded back into the roar of the fire.

The fire was spreading fast now. Flames stood in every upper window of the theater, and the marquee glowed from behind. The smoke rolled thick and black, and the wind turned, and everyone caught the smell at the same time: burning wood, but mainly, burning flesh, rotten burning flesh. The fire was consuming the whole building and the infected along it. A few women pulled their collars over their noses. Everyone started walking.

The streets were empty. Whatever infected the district had, Gilead had penned or drawn, and now the theater was eating them.

The group found a diner on a corner, windows blown out but the roof solid, a clear view down both streets, counter and booths thick with dust. Tommy and Bruce swept it in a minute. Nothing. Just menus still in their holder and a clock stopped at some ordinary hour of some ordinary day, years ago.

Everyone came apart at once. Women slid down against the counter, sat right on the floor. The dogs made the rounds, checking every lap, licking every salty face.

You sat on the floor with Tommy, him leaned back against the wall, you between his legs, your back against his chest, his arms wrapped around you.

“You ok?” He asked.

“Yes.”

He pressed his lips into your hair and left them there. Then your temple. Then your hair again, slow. He was running on nothing, no sleep, no food, many days of road and the last hours of war, and you could feel the exhaustion arriving in his body now that nothing was chasing it away. All that weight, coming due at once. You laced your fingers through his and held his arms tighter around you.

Across the room, Bruce was staring at you.

You met his eyes. And you brought one finger up to your lips.

Bruce blinked. Something worked in his face, a hundred questions filing themselves away unasked. Then he nodded, faint, still half in shock, and looked down at Mochi, who had claimed his enormous lap like a bed.

"Are they all dead?" Kath asked carefully, from the counter.

"Yes," Tommy said.

"We still have Damian and Joshua out there," another woman said quietly. "When they come back,"

"Even more dead," Tommy huffed, eyes closed, head tipped back against the wall.

The room went still. Kath straightened. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely." He reached one arm lazily into his pack, came out with his cigarettes, and lit one. He took a long drag and let the smoke go.

The women stayed still. Looking at him. Looking at each other.

And then it started. It came in waves. A whisper first. "We're… free?" Kelly's mouth moved around the words without sound. Someone else whispered it too. We're free. We're free?

Then louder. Then someone laughed a strange, rusty, out-of-practice laugh, and that broke it open. Lucy was crying and laughing at the same time. Kath had both hands over her mouth. And then they were on their feet, all of them, grabbing each other, hugging, jumping, sobbing into each other's necks, saying it over and over at full voice now: we're free, we're free! Kelly scooped up Coco and spun her in a circle while another girl did the same with Mochi, both dogs losing their minds with joy they didn't need to understand. Pure, genuine happiness, running loose in every body in that room, a thing this world had rationed for years, spilling everywhere at once.

You watched it from the floor, from inside his arms, tears sliding warm and easy down your face.

Tommy watched it too, through half-open eyes, smoke curling off his fingers. And you felt it move through his chest before you heard it.

"Well," he murmured into your hair. "Look at that."

Somebody's gotta be dumb enough to believe things can get better, he thought.

The celebration burned bright and long. The women talked over each other, laughed at nothing, laughed at everything. Names of towns were thrown around. Sisters that might still be alive. Plans, wild and half-impossible, stacked on top of each other.

"Hold your horses, girls," Bruce rumbled from the window, deadpan. "It's still the apocalypse. It ain't like we're goin' shopping tomorrow." The whole room broke up laughing.

You turned in Tommy’s arms, whispering. "Sleep. One hour. I'll watch."

He wanted to argue. But his body had already voted, and with you pressed against his chest and Bruce with his gun by the window, he lost the fight in under a minute. His head tipped back against the wall, his arms stayed locked around you, and Tommy Miller went out like a blown candle.

You spent the hour exactly the way you wanted to spend it: Cuddled into him, memorizing his face again, the little furrow between his brows finally smoothed out. His heart bumping slow and steady under your ear. His chest rising and falling under your hand.

When he woke exactly one hour later, like a soldier's clock, the first thing his eyes found was you. Still there. Still curled into him. Still looking at him with your eyes shining.

He took stock of himself, half-embarrassed: dirty, sweaty, reeking of smoke and death, hair a disaster, one arm dead asleep under you.

And you were looking at him like he was the most beautiful thing alive.

He'd been many things in his life. Soldier. Smuggler. His brother's gun. But sitting on that dirty floor with you in his arms and nine free women resting around him, he realized, quietly, that he had never in his whole life felt this right.

As if you'd read his mind. "You're our hero," you said softly.

He grinned, shy. "Nah,"

"No." You looked at the room. Kath braiding Lucy's hair, Kelly asleep with both dogs, Bruce keeping his window, the women smiling and life coming back at their faces slowly. And looked back to him. "You saved me. You saved these people." A pause. "And two dogs, you. You did it,"

"It’s not—"

"Let me finish." You put your palm flat over his heart, and held his eyes. "You killed more than twenty evil men, alone, to do it. The young man who signed for army once, in the past… he wanted to be exactly this."

His breath caught, you felt it under your hand.

"Look around. Every person in this room is going to wake up tomorrow with a new life because of you. That's you, Tommy. You're what a light looks like, in a world this dark."

His eyes shone wet in the dark. He didn't trust his voice, so he stayed quiet. He just reached up, wrapped his hand around yours over his heart, and hold it there, pressing more kisses into your hair.

Eventually, there was nothing left to wait for. Tommy stood, pulling you up with him, and rolled his bad shoulder once, testing it. He looked at the room and the group looked back, all of them quietly waiting for someone to say what happened next.

"We're headed to Baltimore," Tommy said simply. "Me and her."

You kept your face calm. Inside, something jumped and spun like the dogs had earlier.

The women looked at each other. Nobody said the obvious thing out loud, that none of them had anywhere to go. Bruce cleared his throat and took it.

"They kept their horses stabled right beside. Supplies too." He pushed off the window frame. "We'll go grab what we need. I'll... think of somewhere safe I can take these girls. At least until we figure out what comes after." He crossed the room to Tommy and held the gun out, grip first. "You can come take some things too."

Tommy took the gun and holstered it. "We will. But I'm keepin' the bay I came in on." A tired half-smile. "He's already a buddy of mine."

Then he crouched, pulled the map from his pack, and spread it on the diner counter. Bruce leaned in. Tommy tapped one spot, north.

"See this place here? There's a camp." He looked up at Bruce. "Look for Sarah. Tell her Tommy Miller sent you."

Bruce studied the spot, then stored the location into his memory. He nodded.

Tommy went with Bruce to get the supplies he needed, quickly, and came back.

The goodbye took longer than you imagined. Kath hugged you first, hard, her chin hooked over your shoulder. "You clever, stubborn thing," she whispered. "Thank you.” Then she took Tommy's hand in both of hers and just held it, not able to say any of it, and he nodded like he'd heard it all anyway. Kelly hugged you with a dog under each arm, so you got licked from two directions at once. Some cried. All of them were deeply grateful to you and Tommy.

Bruce came last. He shook Tommy's hand, one solid pump. Then he looked at you. "Take care of her," he said to Tommy.

"With my life."

Bruce glanced at you once more. "I figured."

And then they went one way, and you went the other.

The streets were dark and empty, lit orange behind your back from the burning theater. You walked close to Tommy, holding hands, the silence between you easy for the first time since Boston. Somewhere a few blocks over, women's voices and a dog's happy bark faded into the night.

"Who is Sarah?" you asked. “I mean, besides your niece.”

Tommy was quiet for a few steps.

You reached the street where he'd left the horse. Tommy settled his rifle across his back, secured the pack, and swung up into the saddle. Then he reached down, took your arm, and pulled you up in front of him, your back against his chest, his arms coming around you to take the reins. It started moving, hooves quiet on the dead street.

"Sarah found me at the bottom of a hole." He replied. "Patched my shoulder. Fed me. Didn't ask for a thing. Those girls'll be safe with her."

He brought your hand up and kissed your knuckles, slow.

"And someday," he added, quiet, "she'll probably be a Firefly too." A huff, almost a laugh, warm against your ear. "You'll like her. Hell, she already fed you without knowin' it."

You frowned, confused. "What?"

"You hungry?"

"Oh! yes. Starving."

"Hell, me too. Grab a few jerky strips from my pack. And the candy."

He passed you his pack, and your fingers found a small dented cardboard box. You pulled it out into the moonlight and read the faded letters, and your whole body lit up at once.

"No." You gasped. "Cookie Dough Bites?! Oh my god! Tommy! These were my favorite! My favorite favorite! I told you that! you remembered?!" You twisted in the saddle and kissed him, fast and clumsy and completely overjoyed, half missing his mouth, and felt him grinning under it.

"Don't get your hopes up," he drawled, steadying you with one arm. "Thing's been through a lot. Probably tastes like shit at this point."

You were already tearing it open. You shook a few into your palm and shoved them in your mouth, and your eyes went huge.

"It tastes amazing." You said it with your mouth completely full, scandalized by how good it was. "Tommy. Tommy, it tastes amazing. Open."

He opened. You reached back and shoved a few into his mouth, and he made a low surprised sound as he chewed, and you both started laughing. Quiet at first, then not quiet at all, the two of you giggling like idiots toward south.

--- An hour later, maybe two, Tommy found a calm neighborhood. He circled the block once, reading it, and picked a house with a fenced yard and its windows still whole.

He swung down, opened the yard gate, and led the horse through. The grass stood knee-high, and by the porch sat an old bucket, half full of rainwater. The horse found it before Tommy finished closing the gate.

"There you go." Tommy tied him loose to the porch rail, and stayed a moment, rubbing the big neck, scratching behind the ears. "You did real good, buddy." He pressed his forehead briefly against the animal's cheek. "Now you take a rest. You earned it more than any of us." Then he helped you down.

He went in first, sweeping the house room by room. It didn't take long. "Clear." He holstered the gun, and then said, with genuine feeling, "God, I hope they got runnin' water. I need a shower so bad."

You stopped. Looked at him with your eyebrows climbing. "Excuse me?" A slow grin spread across your face. "Already catching my things, Miller?"

He pointed at the whole disaster of himself, the gore stiffening his shirt. "Look at this."

You looked him up and down and nodded seriously. "You don't need a shower. You need to soak in a bathtub for about three days. Maybe a priest, too."

You both laughed, tired, hugging each other and staying that way for some seconds.

"I need one too," you said, quieter. "A quick one? Before sleeping?"

Tommy was dead on his feet, the exhaustion draining him. But the jerky and half a box of candy had lifted him just enough, and he knew he'd sleep better clean than he would drenched in sweat and blood and smoke.

"Sure," he said.

The bathroom was small and dusty, but functional. Tommy reached into the shower and turned the tap. The pipes knocked, coughed, and then… water. Running rust-brown.

"It works." He announced, satisfied. "Probably cold as hell, but it works. Will let it run, it'll clean out."

He left it open, the water drumming behind you. And then he came to stand behind you at the sink, and your eyes found each other in the dusty mirror.

His hands came to the hem of your shirt and he lifted it off you, slow, and then his lips started their work. The crown of your head. Your temple. The curve where your neck met your shoulder, one kiss at a time, unhurried, feeling every part of you he'd missed. His eyes kept returning to yours in the mirror between each one.

Then his fingers came around and brushed, feather-light, along your scar in your chest. You watched him do it in the glass, his rough hand moving so gently. You closed your eyes and twisted your head toward your shoulder, searching for his mouth.

His hand caught your face. Gently and silently he turned it back to the mirror.

"Look at us," he murmured against your ear.

You looked. The two of you, bruised and blood-streaked and half-undressed in a dead house, and somehow, in that clouded glass, the most alive thing you'd ever seen. You smiled, and he kept kissing you, your neck, your shoulder, your back, watching you watch.

Behind you, he worked the buttons of his own shirt, and then it fell away and his skin met your back, warm, so deliciously warm.

"You know I'm comin' with you, right?" His eyes held yours in the mirror.

"To Baltimore? Yes. I know, Tommy."

He reached behind his own neck then, and lifted something over his head, something that had been riding beside his army tag. And before you fully understood, his hands were lowering a chain over your head, easing your hair out from under it. The small weight settled against your chest, finding its exact old home above your scar. The firefly pendant.

"That too," he said quietly. "But I meant the Fireflies."

Your hand flew up and closed around the pendant, and everything hit you at once.

"You're coming with me?" Your voice broke apart. "You're—coming? And you found it? oh my god. Oh my god, Tommy."

You twisted around, and he was ready. His hands caught your waist and lifted you up onto the sink cabinet in one motion, stepping in between your knees. You pulled him in, locked your legs around him, dragged him closer and kissed him. His mouth soft on yours, both of you smiling into it too much to kiss properly, his thumbs stroking slow circles at your waist. Then your fingers slid into his curls and his breath changed, and the kiss deepened, opened, turned into something slower and hungrier at once. His tongue found yours, his hands spreading warm across your bare back, pulling you flush against him. You drank each other in with nothing else to split you both apart, nothing left in the whole world to interrupt, and he kissed you like he was making up for every kiss he'd ever refused you, thorough and reverent and unhurried, while the shower ran clean.

When you finally parted, breathless, his forehead came to rest against yours. Your legs stayed locked around him.

"A Firefly," you whispered, still not believing it, thumb tracing his jaw. "Tommy Miller, a Firefly."

"Mm." He pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth, and you felt him smile.

Tommy stepped behind to move to the shower, but you tighten your legs around him and pulled him back.

"No," you said.

He frowned, confused for half a second.

You looked at his face: with the blood all over it, the soot shading his forehead, the split skin, the exhaustion. Every mark of the hell he had walked through to reach you, written all over him. And scattered underneath all of it, those freckles you loved, surviving everything.

The sight of him battered, filthy, alive and here for you made your heart clench so hard it hurt. Heat bloomed low in your belly, sudden and fierce.

"I want you like this first."

He blinked. "Wait, what?"

"No shower." You held his eyes, unashamed. "You look too hot like this."

Surprise crossed his face, then the crooked grin spread mischievously.

"Well," he drawled. "Yes, ma'am."

He stepped back in and pulled your pants off you, unhurried, sliding them down your legs while you lifted your hips off the counter for him, his eyes never leaving yours. You reached for the button of his jeans and worked it open, and he stepped out of them, and then there was nothing left between you. You glued together.

His skin was burning hot against yours, and the kiss turned desperate immediately, the mouths open, hands everywhere, weeks of hunger with no need to hide anymore. You broke it just to hold his face in both hands, taking in the wreckage of him one more time, all that blood spilled for you, the loudest love letter anyone had ever written you, and then you kissed him harder, pulling him in by the jaw, and he groaned into your mouth.

He never broke the kiss, and he grabbed your ass with both hands and pulled you right to the edge of the sink. You felt the thick head of his cock press against your entrance. He rocked his hips, teasing, sliding just the tip in and out while you both panted into the kiss.

"I missed you so much," he breathed between kisses, ragged. "Fuck, you feel so good. I love you so fucking much."

You parted from his mouth and leaned back, supporting yourself on one arm, tilting your hips up to offer him more. Your eyes stayed locked on his face, this beautiful, dangerous face that kept sweetness just for you.

"I love you too, I love you… I missed you so bad." Your eyes dropped to where your bodies joined, barely, and you rolled your hips once more, aching. "Please. Put it all in. Please, Tommy, give me all of it."

He smiled. Slow. Watching you squirm, watching his own restraint undo you.

"Be patient, baby."

And he moved slowly, back and forth, giving you just a little more with every push, an inch at a time, letting you feel every bit of the stretch while you whimpered and chased him with your hips. His jaw was tight with the effort of going slow. His eyes stayed on your face the whole time, drinking in every reaction.

"There she is," he murmured, when he finally seated himself fully and you cried out and did that undone face he’d lost himself into all the time. Making you feel good was the best feeling in the whole fucking world, indeed. "God. There she is."

Then he started to move for real with deep and steady strokes, his hands anchoring your hips, the counter creaking under you, and the feeling was unbearably good, the ache of his absence dissolved in tenderness and pleasure.

He started to sweat, and you watched, mesmerized, beads running down his temples, his throat, cutting slow clean lines through the soot and softening the dried blood until it ran again in faint red trails moving over his skin with every thrust, dropping on you, marking you with it.

He held your eyes and kept moving, letting you look, the feral thing and the loving thing in one body, both of them entirely yours.

The pleasure built fast then, coiling tight and tighter.

"You're perfect," he gasped.

"You're, fuck, Tommy—" Your breath was breaking apart and he felt it, he'd always been able to read your body. “Oh my God, Tommy, this is so good—"

"Comin' already?" He asked in a breathless huff.

"Hm-hmm — Tommy… yes, God, Tommy, yes,"

You hugged him tight, clinging to him completely, legs locked around his waist. Your face was buried in his throat, and you curled into him completely. His arms crushed you against his chest in answer, one hand splaying across your back, the other cradling your head, and you folded into each other, every possible inch of skin pressed together, and the wave took you both at once.

You came together, shaking, moaning into each other's necks.

His hips pressed deep and stood there, your bodies locked in one single trembling shape as two people fused completely, chest to chest, two heartbeats synced.

“I’ve never felt more alive,” he whispered, voice hoarse and trembling with emotion.

You stayed like that, wrapped around each other, breathing hard, as two halves of the same rhythm finally allowed to exist together.

----

teaches unforgettable lessons to bad men. Rids the world of evil. Gentle with dogs. Sweet-talks horses. brings snacks. And STILL has the stamina to wreck us after all of it. AAAAAAAAA. Tommy Miller, the man that you ARE.

END NOTES! IMPORTANT!

Now for the sad news: we've almost reached the end. The next chapter will be the last. Fasten your seatbelts. our cute lovers' lives are not about to get any easier.

pls pls pamper me with love because the last chapter will be EXPLOSIVE and I need the fuel

and we finally reached the chapter of my comission. Thank you so much for being with me this long!

Tag list:

@xodilfluvr @twilightvelour @igotyoubabygirlao3 @ireneadlerwrites @alanageorgy @brittbrat1990 @that-antler-queen @gorygladiators @luckybug48 @honey-moon-13 @the-clear-northern-skies @gabetmiller @awkwardambition @aphroditekillz @politeolive @speaktothehandpeasants

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

miah