To the Light { a joel miller fanfiction }

Chapter Two - Buoyancy

"What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what it
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?"
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anima Poetæ

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Maria had shown up early in the morning, right as the sun inched toward the bottom of the horizon, with a bag full of clothes for Adeline.

Joel was already awake when she arrived, not having slept much the night before. He kept hearing her screams, that godforsaken sound, every time he closed his eyes.

"So... what was that... last night?" Maria had asked just as soon as she'd handed him the bag of clothes, a muttered thank you was his only response.

Joel's mouth twitched, then his hand, but he didn't say anything.

"Do you know her? Someone you met getting here... or?" She paused, searching his face, "I won't tell Tommy if you don't want me to."

Joel shook his head slowly, gazing off somewhere behind her.

He didn't know her, but there was something familiar there, living in those emerald eyes. Looking into them didn't feel the same as seeing someone you haven't in a while, it was different, like something deep inside of him knew her, had been looking for her, but hadn't clued the rest of him in on it until she was there, in front of him.

"So, you just... decided to take in a stray?" Hands on her hips, head cocked to the side.

"Stop callin' her that." Gruff voice almost a growl, hands twitching at his sides.

Maria squinted at him, held her gaze there for a moment, then shook her head.

"You're being weird, Joel, you're being real weird." She called out as she turned on her heels and walked down the steps of his porch.

He knew she was right, but he still muttered a curse as he closed the door.

He carefully ascended the stairs, then set the bag of clothes outside of the bedroom door, opting to let her sleep rather than knock and possibly risk disturbing the first bit of real sleep she'd probably gotten in a while. Though, he remembered when he first got to Jackson, he'd still slept with his rifle by his bed, waking up at the smallest sound, the house settling or the wind rattling the window. He'd gone a little soft now. So much so, that sometimes he forgot to lock the front fucking door.

He descended the stairs just as carefully so as not to wake her.

He was going a little mad thinking about the fact that there was a woman sleeping in his bed... specifically while he wasn't also in it. But he was trying to resist thoughts like that, especially when it came to her, who was far too young for him and who he knew nothing about beyond her name.

Would he ever know more than just her name?

Jackson wasn't that big, but there were some people who he'd only crossed paths with at larger events, town halls and parties that Ellie dragged him to. He knew their names, their faces, but beyond that, they were just numbers on a slowly growing census sheet.

It was possible that after this, after she moved into her own place, found her own group of people within the town, that she would just be another one of those numbers. After all, Joel certainly wasn't a face in the town's social scene.