Chapter Text
When Tommy was fourteen, he broke his leg. It wasn’t the first time, and if you asked anyone who knew him, they’d swear it wouldn’t be the last and they'd be right.
He knew he gave Joel a hard time—not on purpose, but he wasn’t blind. He could see Joel was overprotective, saw Tommy as his responsibility, whether he wanted him to or not.
Tommy was growing into himself, eager to live his own life, to screw up and learn like anyone else. But Joel, in all his big brother wisdom, seemed to think that just because *he* had already made the mistakes, it was his job to save Tommy from making his own.
Which was how Tommy ended up with a broken leg on a concrete floor, skateboard splintered to hell, while the old plank ramp he’d built out of leftover barn repair scraps sat nearby—sturdy, perfect, and totally unharmed.
At least one thing worked, the young boy told himself grimly.
He could still hear Joel’s absolute meltdown when he dragged himself through the front door, leg trailing uselessly behind him.
They spent the whole damn day in that emergency room. Joel had pried every detail out of Tommy’s stubborn fourteen-year-old mouth, no matter how long it took.
Their father hadn't exactly been sympathetic. He figured Tommy needed to 'learn from his mistakes' and left it at that, barely sparing a glance at the oversized cast swallowing Tommy's leg.
But Joel—Joel stayed. He looked after Tommy for the six long months it took to heal.
Memories like that were a blessing and a curse for Tommy now, sitting here as a broken fifty-six-year-old man. His leg was shot to hell, his right eye saw nothing but shadows and flickers of light. Hell, he was practically blind on that side.
He was an invalid.
It wasn’t a label he would’ve slapped on anyone else but himself.
He’d survived the army without getting himself blown up or shot. He’d survived twenty-five brutal years after the world ended.
And yet, somehow, he lost everything in just a single year.
It was all her fault.
That mountain of muscle. That woman.
He still dreamed about that day.
He couldn’t remember all the details clearly anymore—memories like that had a way of blurring at the edges—but he remembered the cold that sank into his skin, the tension that locked his muscles tight.
He might not recall the exact day.
But he sure as hell remembered her.
He clutched his chest, feeling that creeping, familiar sensation: the cold sweat, the unshakable dread slithering up the back of his neck and pressing down heavy on his ribs.
This wasn’t the first time he'd fought off a panic attack, and yet somehow, it felt worse than usual.
Maybe it was the fact that he was alone in this tiny room, bottles scattered across the floor like dead weight. Or maybe it was the smell—death lingering in every shadow, heavy and inescapable.
Maria would’ve never let the place get this bad if they weren’t divorced despite what the official status of 'taking a break' made you think.
He got it, she couldn't handle him anymore. He wasn’t helpful. He wasn't... anything.
Anger—sharp and familiar—started to rise in his chest as he pulled himself off the sagging couch. Using the battered furniture for balance, he maneuvered toward the corner of the room that passed as a kitchen.
It wasn’t much. Just a beat-up cooker he'd traded his sniper rifle for.
Not like he could shoot anymore.
And it wasn’t just the cooker.
Nobody in Jackson would take something from him without shoving fifty other things into his hands—pity wrapped in charity he hadn’t asked for.
He'd thrown all their "gifts" into the corner: blankets, canned food, old books.
His guilt was too thick to throw them away, but his pride was too damn high to ever use them.
He was tired of it. Tired of Jackson treating him exactly how he felt inside.
Grimacing, he straightened his back slowly, ignoring the dull throb in his thigh where the pain flared when he put too much pressure on it.
He dragged open the cabinet and grabbed the bottle of painkillers.
He didn’t bother reading the instructions anymore. Hadn’t for a long time.
At this point, he just tipped a few into his hand and let fate decide if today was the day he finally overdid it.
It was Wednesday. Ellie usually broke through his miserable silence on Wednesdays.
She’d moved back to Jackson a few months ago, after losing a couple fingers—Tommy still hadn't had the guts to acknowledge that he was part of the reason she'd nearly been killed.
And somehow, despite everything, she didn’t seem to hold a grudge.
Dina, though? Dina hadn't so much as glanced at him since she wandered back into Jackson with JJ, just a few weeks after he'd last seen her. That was how he found out Ellie had left.
He nearly drank himself to death that night.
Point was, Ellie seemed to have made it her mission to keep him breathing.
He understood why.
He just didn’t think he needed saving.
He limped across the room, every step dragging a little more life out of him, grunting through the pain until he finally let himself fall into the wrecked couch cushions with a rough huff of air.
The scotch was waiting for him. Half a bottle of golden regret, sitting there like it knew he’d come crawling back.
He didn’t think and he didn’t hesitate.
Just grabbed it, tipped it high, and let the fire pour down his throat. It burned so good, burned so bad—and for one second, he could almost pretend he wasn’t stuck living in the wreckage of his own goddamn life.
After that... Everything blurred.
When he woke, the world was vicious.
Light stabbed at his face, sharp and unforgiving. Cold gnawed at his skin, cruel and greedy.
Something wet clung to the bottom of his clothes, spreading up his body with a slow, bone-deep chill.
He coughed, groaned low in his chest, and tried to roll over—eyes still shut tight, head pounding, hoping that it was scotch causing the wet feeling and not that he'd pissed himself.
But instead of finding the scratchy old couch under him, his face smashed into something brutal and cold.
He gasped—sharp, ugly—and his eyes snapped open.
Snow.
He was lying in the goddamn snow.
For a second, he just stared, brain lagging behind reality. Then the panic kicked in, fierce and ugly. He scrambled upright into a kneeling position, ignoring the numb scream in his knee, hands slapping over his soaked clothes.
Same clothes he remembered pulling on when he collapsed onto the couch.
Same jacket, same jeans.
Same sorry bastard wearing them.
"Are you okay?" a voice called out.
He turned his head stiffly, vision blurring around the edges, and saw them—two horses, two riders.
The one who spoke was a young woman, her long black hair stuffed under a thick hat, her body wrapped in enough gear to survive a blizzard.
She was looking down at him with this raw, open worry—like he was some stray dog on the side of the road.
It wasn't the first time he'd woken up after a drunken night, but he didn't even remember drinking more than that scotch.
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Just a faint click, dry as dust.
He tried again—still nothing but the hollow scrape of breath.
The shivers hit him all at once, hard enough to rattle his bones. Cold tunneled under his skin, soaked into his veins. His brain finally caught up, sending a late flood of messages: freezing. wet. broken. alone.
Still, somewhere beneath the misery, he realized something else:
He wasn’t drunk. Not even a whisper of a hangover and with apparent situation, he couldn't complain.
"Where..." The word stumbled out of his mouth before his brain could catch up.
Safety wasn’t even a thought anymore, he didn’t give a damn.
The horse to his right shifted, the rider tugging the reins to edge closer to the girl, standing now beside her like he was planting himself between Tommy and whatever threat he imagined Tommy could be.
"Get your blanket outta your pack and get on my horse," the man said, voice low but firm. "We'll take him into town. Get him some food."
The girl was already moving before he finished speaking, digging into the saddle bag slung over her horse.
The man turned his hard stare down to Tommy. "Are ya armed?"
It wasn’t the question itself—it was how he asked it. Stern. Cautious. Eyes sharp enough to cut straight through him, scanning the treeline like he expected a goddamn ambush any second.
Tommy found it weirdly comforting though he couldn't put it down what about it was apparently making him feel grounded.
"I'm barely covered." Tommy said, voice rough but carrying a flicker of humor, more dry than funny. "If I had a weapon, you'd see it."
The girl let out a quiet laugh she tried to smother, and even the guy—stone-faced as he was—rolled his eyes with the kind of long-suffering patience a man reserves for people who can’t help mouthing off.
The man muttered something under his breath, he didnt hear it and Tommy wasnt looking to hear it either, and the girl swung down from her horse with easy grace.
She knelt beside Tommy, working quickly to drape the blanket around his shoulders.
He wished he didn’t grunt when she touched him—wished he didn’t wince like some brittle old man—but the sound escaped anyway.
A harsh, low noise he remembered hearing from his own father on the bad days.
The memory hit him like a sucker punch.
Goddamn, he thought, I’m my old man.
"Thanks Ma'am," he muttered, throat tight.
The girl just nodded. Her big brown eyes were too soft, too kind for a world like this, but underneath all that, Tommy could still see it—the guard she kept up.
Smart girl.
Kindness was a luxury you didn't get to hand out for free anymore.
She smiled, small and patient, then stood up and waited for him, giving him the dignity of not reaching out a hand.
Tommy set his jaw and forced himself upright, biting down the sounds of pain, holding his breath like it could somehow brace him against the knife twisting in his knee.
He didn't know if these people were like her. He didn't plan to put his guard down for even a second around them.
He swayed a little once he was up, but he didn't fall and for now, that was good enough.
The girl either didn’t notice or was too polite to react, but the older man's hand twitched—a small, instinctive flicker.
Tommy caught it.
Watched as the guy slowly moved his hand away from the grip of his gun.
It should’ve made him feel better. It didn’t.
He hated that he deserved it. Hated that if they decided to turn on him right now, he wouldn’t even get a hand on them before they put him down.
He wasn’t a threat anymore.
Not to them.
Not to anyone.
The ride—wherever the hell it was taking him—passed in silence.
Tommy swayed stiffly atop the girl’s horse, tied off to the other mount because they didn't trust him with control.
Didn’t really bother him. Control was a long-gone concept at this point anyway.
Where they were going barely even crossed his mind.
What chewed at him was something far worse:
How the hell did I wake up in the snow?
He’d never sleepwalked before. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could.
Sleep-crawling? Maybe. Sleep-crashing into shit? Definitely.
But walking? Upright? Out a door, across God knows how much land, into the freezing cold—All while unconscious?
That wasn’t just troubling.
That was terrifying.
What next?, He thought bitterly. Am I gonna start making sniper shots from a mile out in my sleep, too?
It felt like something was teasing him, reminding him.
The thought almost made him laugh. Almost.
Ahead, the two riders started talking. Low, half-distracted conversation that Tommy only caught in broken pieces.
Names floated through the cold air—Hap, Trent, Marcus.
None of them rang any bells in his head. Just white noise until they had faces to match.
It wasn’t until they finally crested a ridge and he caught sight of the walls of Jackson that something sharper cut through the fog in his brain.
He saw the rather impressive defenses the walls had, the guy waved a green fabric and the gate opened.
“Joel, Dina, heard the 4-12 on the radio—who’s the injured?” The voice came from somewhere near the gates.
Tommy’s attention sharpened, pulled like a magnet toward the sound.
Joel. Dina.
Names that mattered.
Names that hurt.
It wasn’t like he thought names like Joel and Dina were rare. Still, hearing *that* name out loud always knocked the wind out of him.
He sucked in a shaky breath and half-fell, half-climbed off the horse.
The second his bad leg twisted wrong, he couldn't bite back a rough groan, hot shame pooled in his gut.
Another man—someone Tommy didn’t recognize, which wasnt a surprise when he knew none of these people—stepped forward, giving him a long, cautious once-over.
“You injured?” he asked, eyes narrowing, hands twitching like he was itching to start checking for bites.
Tommy shrugged and brushed a piece of hair out of his face, meeting the man’s eyes with fake power.
“I got a bum knee and I’m half blind. Other than that..." He snorted dryly. "No."
The man clearly wasn’t satisfied with that answer, suspicion still tightening his mouth and Tommy hoped giving those two very obvious pieces of information wouldn't cost him.
Tommy figured if it were him, he wouldn’t trust a half-frozen, half-blind cripple who stumbled outta nowhere either.
Movement caught Tommy’s eye—a woman approaching, her gloved hand cutting through the cold air as she gestured toward him.
“Why is he still out here?” she asked sharply, voice all business.
Something about her—he couldn’t name it—snapped his attention to her in a way that felt instinctual.
Strong. Unafraid. Dangerous, maybe.
“We ain’t sure if he’s safe," the older man—Joel, apparently—answered.
"Found him passed out in the snow past the edge of the forest, no gear. Honestly, surprised he’s still breathin’."
Hearing Joel attached to this stranger’s face was a sucker punch Tommy hadn’t prepared for.
But he swallowed it down. The guy looked like a Joel, hard to explain why that made sense. But he was almost nothing like his brother. He needed to stop seeing him in other people.
Just get your bearings, he told himself. Find out where the hell you are, then get movin'.
The woman nodded, calculating, filing the information away. Then she turned her sharp gaze fully onto him.
Sizing him up like she could already see all the broken pieces he was trying to hide.
“What’s your name?”
Tommy hesitated. Eyes flicked across the small group—guards, rifles, glances sharpened with distrust—and for a split second, bile crawled up the back of his throat.
Giving up his name felt dangerous.
Exposing. Still, the word pushed out before he could stop it, “Tommy.”
It burned coming out. Like betrayal. Like loss. He knew why, he always knows why he's now like the way he is. But being reminded was only another punch.
The woman just nodded, like she hadn’t noticed the way he flinched.
"Alright, Tom," she said, sliding the nickname in with no ceremony. "We’ll get you checked out. If you pass a health inspection, you’ll have a place to clean up, eat, and sleep. Tomorrow morning, we’ll decide—with your input—whether you stay or go."
Tommy just nodded, numb. He hadn’t been called Tom before, not outside classrooms when he was kid. Stupidly enough Tommy sounded less childish.
Didn’t really matter anymore.
A new stranger showed up not long after, armed with gear and a dead-eyed efficiency that spoke of too many years patching up half-dead survivors.
The next few hours blurred together.
They ran every test imaginable. Blood draws. Eye checks. Reflex tests. He fought every single one, one way or another, they didn't seemed phased by any of it though.
They even had a goddamn QZ scanner—most likely from an abandoned QZ but having more than one working one was rather impressive.
What the hell is this place?
Once they confirmed he wasn’t infected—and decided he was as healthy as a busted-up old horse could be—they didn’t exactly celebrate.
They just wrote it down. Clinical. Cold.
He caught the words scrawled on the clipboard when the nurse shifted positions:
Unable to work.
Not in big letters, not underlined, but Tommy saw it anyway and felt it carve into him like a rusted knife.
The anger that coiled in his gut wasn’t new.
Neither was the sickness.
They didn't say it out loud—people around here seemed polite like that—but he knew what they were thinking.
Dead weight. Just another mouth to feed.
Eventually, they led him to what he figured was some kind of temporary housing. Jackson had places like this too.
Maria had set aside a whole row of them—old houses, half-collapsed and dangerous. Tommy and later Joel had rebuilt them with their own hands.
He remembered the laughing, the bitching, the stupid inside jokes that had made the work fly by.
Now, standing here in a room that smelled faintly of bleach and old wood, all he wanted was a stiff drink to drown the memories.
"I’ll go see about finding you some clothes,” a voice said from the doorway.
Tommy blinked, dragging himself back to the present.
It was the same man who’d walked him to the doctor’s office—quiet, patient, forgettable in a way that made Tommy feel guilty.
“The woman you met earlier was Maria," the man added. "She usually handles introductions, but she’s... busy.”
Maria.
Another goddamn name that hit him like a hammer to the ribs. First Joel and Dina and now a Maria. It should feel like a coincidence but it still simmered under his skin like rat poison.
She had that same aura too—the way people paused, waited for her nod before moving.
A leader.
Tommy swallowed down the nausea curling up his throat, nodded once, jerky.
“Tell her I appreciate the warm place,” he rasped, voice rough as gravel.
The man gave him a tight, pitying smile.
The kind of smile people gave a dog too old to hunt anymore.
Tommy hated it.
Almost said something about it but he didn't want to get on anyone's bad side. He might have his different ideas on the value of the next day, he still had people who needed him.
The man didn’t step into the room.
He just nodded again and pulled the door closed behind him.
Tommy stood there, arms limp at his sides, his right hand unconsciously bracing against his ruined thigh like it might somehow still offer support.
And then, the realization hit him that he never even asked where he was.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, the word hanging useless in the empty room.
He hobbled around the room, his limp echoing in the stillness as he surveyed every corner, every empty space. Before he realized it, he was casing the place. His eyes flicked to every exit, every entry point, mentally noting where they could stick something—anything.
Fifteen minutes of scanning every inch, and he was satisfied. The room seemed secure enough. Not the people—not by a long shot—but the room? Yeah, it was solid.
He shuffled into the bathroom. The tub was old, clearly patched up, but it was obvious this wasn’t a place meant for long-term comfort. Just enough to get by.
A towel hung on the rack, and he didn’t waste any time grabbing it. He climbed into the tub, the water cold as it hit his skin. They didn’t offer shampoo or body wash—just water—but that wasn’t a surprise. In places like this, those little luxuries were earned, not handed out. If they ran things like Jackson did, that was just how it worked.
Even with just water, it still took him an hour to scrub the grime off. When he climbed out, though, disgust washed over him again—literally. The water was practically black.
Clothes sat folded on the bed by the door. A chill ran down his spine as he realized he hadn’t noticed anyone coming in to leave them there. Someone had been in the room, and he hadn’t heard a thing.
He pushed the thought aside. He dried off, refusing to glance at the mirror. He didn’t need to see his reflection—not today. Instead, he gave a quick shave to trim down his overgrown beard, then tied his hair into a tight man bun.
He didn't even try to sleep, he knew he wouldn't be able to, he wasn't in much of a mood for more disappointment.
He grabbed the old chair, dragging it to the corner of the room and facing it toward the door. His leg—a useless dead weight—hung off the side, but he leaned forward, watching that door. Every sound, every shift, every bird chirp outside had him twitching, ready to move at the slightest threat.
Wherever he was, it was a lot like Jackson. It had its own community. It wasn’t a savage wasteland, at least not from what he’d seen. Sure, the worst parts didn’t exactly put up a welcoming sign, but there were clues.
When he’d walked through the streets earlier, he'd seen people in wheelchairs—clear signs of old veterans, people who’d been around long enough to need some extra care. And there were regular folks too, moving about their day.
The man who’d shown him around had done it in a way that made sure he didn’t see anything too important. Just the clean, shiny parts—the areas that showed how far they’d come in developing a society. But he was sharp enough to make a few educated guesses.
This place wasn’t Jackson, but it wasn’t far off. It had potential—enough to be an ally, if he could figure out exactly where they were. Once he did, he’d head back, fill Maria in, and maybe they could set up a trading post. That would make him useful again.