Chapter Text
JACKSON NEEDED MEDICS. JACKSON ALWAYS NEEDED MEDICS.
And lucky for them, you were never really good with a rifle.
You weren’t fully hatched when you first got to Jackson—which is to say you didn’t yet know what you were good at. You were kicked out of the planters when a chicken you were tending to nicked your hand after you fed it spoiled corn. You complained too much about grease and dirt to be placed with the mechanics. And you did try, the way everyone does, to join the patrollers, with stiff shoulders and borrowed confidence, lining up the targets to the eyelet and pretending the recoil of the gun doesn’t knock the breath out of you or make your ears ring. You learned the mechanics of it all well enough. Finger off the trigger, breathe out when you pull, don’t flinch, don’t hesitate. You could hit anything if it stayed still long enough, if the wind wasn’t blowing, if your hands didn’t start shaking for reasons you could never name. You weren’t the best of your class, but you were competent enough.
That doesn’t mean you liked it enough to commit to it. You never loved the adrenaline that came with holding a rifle. It made you nervous, and when pulling the trigger with your unsure hands was the difference between life and death, you couldn’t bring yourself to join the patrollers. You never favored a rifle even though you knew how to use it to your advantage. You never trusted it.
What you trusted were your hands.
They were steady in a way the rest of you weren't. They remembered things your mind sometimes let slip, like how much pressure stopped bleeding without cutting off circulation and how pain made people say things they didn’t mean and hide things they very much did. Your hands had learned how to be gentle without being hesitant and how to be efficient amidst chaos. They knew routine and they were quick to act, sometimes even faster than you can make up your own mind.
So when patrol sign-ups filled, and refilled, and refilled until not one space on the two pages were left for people to write their names, you didn’t fight it. You’d always try signing up, do everything you can to stay at the back of the line, feign shock when the page was full, and no one argued. When Maria asked you to help out at the infirmary instead—just until someone more experienced comes around—you’d already said yes before she even finished her sentence.
The infirmary is notorious for never keeping a volunteer around for more than a few weeks. It’s been four months since then. You never left your seat in the infirmary, except to be stationed occasionally at the first aid tents after patrols.
Jackson needed medics. They always did, with the way people lived life there, and how they fought for life to thrive even if it cost them their own. People fell off horses, caught colds, got careless with training. So the routine, now memorized by your skillful hands, was simple: clean wounds, wrap bandages, hand out bottles of remedies, record anything of note. Your hands stayed knowing the routine just one month after you were stationed in the infirmary. You were good there—good at staying when others couldn’t.
Because Jackson was a small, quaint community, everybody knew each other. Ellie and Joel’s arrival into Jackson wasn’t abrupt enough to disturb normal life—one late afternoon, in the mess hall, Tommy introduces his brother and Ellie. Not Joel’s daughter, nor his niece…just Ellie.
Nobody had her figured out.
And in a small town like Jackson, that was something.
Everybody talked, but it all dwindled down two weeks after, when Ellie brought home a large game and quietly retreated to her shed behind Joel’s house. The town’s respect for Ellie skyrocketed since then, and people were nicer, more perceptive of her. The neighborhood kids played with her more, and your friends and everyone your age hung out with her during sunny afternoons. They warmed up to Ellie soon enough, with the help of her playful quips and amiable attitude.
But it was that version of Ellie they understood: the useful Ellie. The one who took after Tommy’s knack for shooting with a sniper, bringing home more food than the other patrollers. The one who kicked a ball back if it landed by her feet. The one who taught teenagers guitar in her free time. They respected Ellie when she brought something back from the woods and laid it at Jackson’s feet for everyone to appreciate. Even you, at one point, liked Ellie for bringing back bandages and medicinal herbs. The Ellie whose distance is as mysterious as it may be armor. People liked her best when she was productive, when she contributed something tangible, and when she fit neatly into the roles Jackson knew how to reward.
What they didn’t see was how she deliberately stayed just out of reach. How she smiled when spoken to but never stayed long enough to be known. How she laughed with the kids, ran with them until their energies depleted and lungs burned, then peeled away the moment the game ended, as if stillness might invite closeness she couldn’t face.
Ellie learned quickly what people wanted from her. She learned to read people, in the Boston QZ, in Salt Lake City, and she learned now what people wanted from her in Jackson. And time and time again, she gave just enough of it to be left alone.
You noticed that before most people did.
You noticed how she left hang outs right before they got good. You noticed how she avoided idle conversation and small talk, how she always seemed more comfortable doing than just being. In town, respect towards Ellie was built on her having to deliver, depending on what she could provide rather than who she was when her hands were empty.
And maybe, you thought, that was why Ellie became a regular at the infirmary.
She was almost always slightly injured. Not badly, not enough to alarm anyone, nor to put her out of duty for a while. But every time she came back, her wounds never healed properly. Scars looked bad or stitches that came undone weren’t brought back to fix. As someone in her social circle, you’d think she would answer questions when you’d ask them. But she sits silently in front of you, head down, spending just enough time in your chair to be patched up and leaving the second she is.
Jackson didn’t ask her to be anything more than capable.
And Ellie, for all her quiet resistance, seemed to understand that better than anyone.
The one time Ellie came in after one particular afternoon patrol, you didn’t know things would be different. You also didn’t know it would be your first time seeing her in a different light.
At a glance, she looked like the same Ellie you came to know.; same aloof expression on her face, same scuffed boots, same faint smell of cold air and something like pine sap clinging to her jacket. She comes into the infirmary without a knock, and the head doctor looks at you pointedly to handle it. She only has a cut along her forearm, shallow but visibly angry, already crusting at the edges. The kind of injury people got when they moved too fast when they knew better than to rush; the kind that you’d have to berate someone to go to the infirmary for.
After a quick look, you spring to your feet. “Hey there,” you say. “You’re bleeding.”
She looked down at her arm like it surprised her, shrugging. “Huh,” she says quietly. “Guess I am.”
That was your first clue.
When she needs to, Ellie usually comes into the clinic showing off her injuries like they were a challenge to care for. When it’s you who sits her down, she throws a playful remark about how she’ll be out of the infirmary in 10 minutes. Or she makes some joke about how her wounds must be nothing compared to what you see on a daily basis (when she is, in fact, the subject of that joke). She always brings someone who had to force her to come to the place; but this time around, she was quiet about her wound. A six-inch laceration on her arm, no doubt something that should have been painful.
Your second clue was Joel Miller, who hovered in the doorway, in a quiet way that pulled at the edges of the infirmary. Tommy also stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes on the floor like he didn’t want to be noticed. That’s when you felt it—the weight of something unspoken between the three of them, pressing down yet still hanging in the air.
Ellie doesn’t look your way, nor Joel’s, nor Tommy’s. She watches your skillful hands instead as you take supplies from the cabinet and set them down on your table.
Ellie places her forearm gently on the blue armrest on your table, watching you, taciturn. You take her forearm and hold her still just a few inches above the cut, which she notices. “You always do that?” She asks suddenly, nodding toward the way you braced her arm before cleaning the wound.
“Do what?”
“That,” she says, raising her eyebrows at your grip on her arm. “Like you’re expecting it to hurt me worse than it does.”
You paused, meeting her green eyes for clues on what she might mean. They were sharp, guarded, and looking for something you didn’t think you had. You only have the slightest idea of what she means, but you don’t think entertaining it would work out at this moment.
“I just don’t like surprises,” you reply. “It might hurt, and you might flinch.”
She snorts quietly and looks away.
Many might not notice, especially if they don’t have the same experience in the infirmary as you do, but under your careful gaze, Ellie’s arm flexes slightly at the first contact of the antiseptic on her wound.
You don’t comment on it. You know better than to give her away like that.
Instead, you rub the skin of her forearm softly as you buff the antiseptic-soaked cotton ball over her cut, careful not to look at her. Her fist, curled into a ball, relaxes after a few swipes.
When you finish wrapping it, she stands up too quickly, tugging her sleeve down over the fresh bandage. You don’t think this is unusual behavior for anyone, especially not from her.
“Thanks,” she mutters, already halfway to the door.
Joel watches Ellie leave like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it into words.
Neither did you.
You noticed Ellie coming around more often after that, which was easy to explain at first. Coming in with scraped, bloody knuckles. A twisted ankle she insists isn’t twisted, just sore. A bruise on her bicep that won’t go away. Normal things to come in after Jackson’s usual patrol. You treated her the same as everyone else, giving her medicine if she needed it and sending her off on her way home. Some days she’s playful, others she won’t utter a word except one of thanks. But you never pry, not to her or to anyone that walks into the clinic.
But patterns have a way of telling you something if you let them.
Ellie never comes in with anyone else anymore. No Joel, no Dina, no Jesse. No one joking at her side while she gets stitches or arguing whose fault it was that she got hurt. She often showed up alone, almost always after 8 PM, after you’d already started cleaning up for the evening.
She’d always stand by the door, waiting to be told to sit. Never took off her jacket unless you asked.
And she never, ever let you check more than what she showed you. But again, you never pry.
You know you’re building a routine, and you’re not sure if you should be worried.
“Any dizziness?” you asked one night, fingers gentle against the side of her head as you examined a shallow gash near her temple.
“Nope.”
“Blurred vision?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
Ellie meets your eyes, holding her gaze. “I’m sure.”
There’s a seriousness in her tone, like if you were to push further, she would storm out of the infirmary.
So instead, you choose to believe her. Or rather, you believed that she believed it. When someone says they’re fine, sometimes, it’s better not to pry, even when you know they’re lying through their teeth.
There was a difference in her words and how she really felt. You could see as clear as you could see the wound on Ellie’s temple, even if it was half-hidden by her hair.
In Jackson, silence was as loud as gossip if you knew how to listen. You heard the way Joel’s name softened when people mentioned him now, the careful phrasing, the way conversations shifted when Ellie entered a room. You notice how Tommy and Maria stay watching her from across the mess hall, not hovering, not intervening; just watching, like they were braced for something to go wrong. But nobody dares to say anything outright, trading words for shared glances and shrugs.
You don’t ask. Not about the shift in the air following that one afternoon.
You learn quickly that Ellie doesn’t respond well to questions she hadn’t agreed to answer. So instead, you focused on what you could see. What you could treat. What you knew.
You saw how she flinched sometimes when your fingers brushed too close to old scars, especially the one on her forearm she doesn’t talk about (and you note that she got it tattooed over a week later). How she goes still when you clean fresh scratches, jaw clenched tight enough to ache her for sure. How she joked more when she was in pain, like the noise could fill the space in her head where thoughts might creep in while you treat her.
“You know,” she said once, as you wrapped her left wrist, “most people try not to get hurt this much.”
You glance up at her, her wrist cradled in one hand, bandage roll in the other. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” she mutters, rolling her eyes. “They figure out when to stop. When to sit. When to…you know. Not do stupid stuff.” She shrugs, letting the words hang in the air like they don’t matter.
You study her wrist, the new bandage, the faint redness of the skin underneath. “And you?”
She snorts softly, half-amused, half-exasperated. “I guess I’m not most people.”
The silence stretches. You know she’s saying more than she lets on and talking around something she doesn’t want to name, but you’re not sure if you should let her know you’re catching on. It’s not just the cut. Not just the patrol, the routines, the scraped boots. It’s everything else she carries—the sharp edges she hides, the restlessness that makes her move too fast and too recklessly, the things she can’t put into words.
You don’t say anything out loud, but you know you don’t have to. You let her sit, even when you’re finished treating her, letting the quiet fill the space between you.
“...You’re really good at this,” she says after a moment, nodding toward your hands, toward the bandage, toward the calmness in the room. Her voice is softer now, no sarcasm, no walls.
You hold her gaze, smiling the softest you can without scaring her away. “Thank you.”
She holds it for a moment, then looks down at her scuffed sneakers, shrugging. “I….I think I’m still bad at being careful, though.”
You nod, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a joke. “Then make sure to keep sitting on my chair,” you say as you clean up your equipment, letting your tone carry just enough firmness to make it sound like medical advice and not a command. “Let me do my job before you go breaking anything else.”
Ellie picks up on the fact that you’ve noticed. “Hey,” she mutters quietly. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“I know,” you nod, smiling just slightly, careful not to push too much. “But you should know I’m right here, too, to patch you up whenever you need it.”
She swallows, quiet now. The room fills with the soft hum of the heater, the faint scent of isopropyl alcohol and antiseptic, and the way her breathing eases by the faintest amount. You notice the tension in her shoulders loosening, tiny, and if you didn’t know her as well as you did at this point, it was almost imperceptible.
Ellie’s gaze drifts to the floor. She’s good at hiding things, you think. Not the obvious things—cuts, scrapes, bruises—but all the rest. The exhaustion. The weight she carries when no one is looking. She doesn’t need to tell you, though; you can see it anyway. You’re trained to see it.
“...Do you always have to be so careful?” she asks after a beat, softer, almost like it’s curiosity rearing its head.
“I do, Ellie,” you answer honestly. “Someone has to be.”
Ellie’s lips twitch, barely a smile. “Figures. You’re the boring responsible one, huh?”
“Boring keeps people from dying,” you say, tying off the bandage one last time.
She laughs slightly, and her small laugh is nothing short of genuine, and her arms relax the tiniest bit. For someone like Ellie, that’s a start.
She stands a moment later, brushing at the edge of her sleeve as if to reset the armor she’s just let down. “Thanks, YN,” she mutters, looking again at her shoes. “For…you know. Not making me feel stupid for being dumb.”
“Always,” you reply softly. No lectures or probing, just honesty in hopes she’ll see it for what it is.
She gets up, and there’s a little more talk, about a hang out the next day at Jesse’s place, about how Jesse’s a horrible cook. Ellie hesitates when she gets to the door, glancing back for the briefest moment before opening the door and leaving. The snow outside glints through the door’s window panes, and you realize she’ll be back.
Maybe not because of the cuts. Maybe not because she needs new bandages. But hopefully because she’ll bet on a trust you know you can return.
Some time in the middle of everything—the approaching winter, patching Ellie up, patching everyone up—you became an official junior medic. Maria tells you about it over dinner, casually, like it was the weather. She hands you a new ledger to keep patient records and notes, a more extensive set of supplies, and the same belt bag you see the senior medic sporting. You even get to wear scrubs now. She trusted you now, too, with decisions instead of just execution.
Ellie noticed the change before you told her, commenting on it a few visits later.
“They finally figured you were good at this?” she asks, nodding toward the new kit at your side.
You grinned, nodding. “They knew I wasn’t ever leaving.”
“Yeah. That tracks.”
It was one of the few times she smiled that didn’t feel forced.
The night everything changed—not broken, just tilted—was quiet.
Snow had started falling early, thick flakes muting the world outside, building small mountains outside the infirmary. The inside of it was warm, the lighting low and soft, the smell of clean cloth and antiseptic settling into something almost comforting as you wash the used hand towels of the day. The clinic was slow today, but still, you couldn't help but feel like more could be done. Well into the evening, when everyone had gone home, you stayed behind to update records and make more syrup remedies for cough.
You were re-shelving supplies when Ellie knocked. She hadn’t come in yet, but you knew it was her. She always comes at this time of night.
She knocks like she was asking permission, not entering before you let her. That was new.
“Come in,” you say, holding bottles of alcohol in one arm.
There’s a beat of silence before the infirmary door creaks open. Ellie steps inside, stamping snow from her boots on the rug by the door before moving your way. She doesn’t say anything at first, only standing by the door with her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets. Her red scarf wraps around her neck and buries half of her face, yet you still see the redness of the tip of her nose and the flush of her cheeks.
You blink. “Hi,” you say gently. “Are you hurt?”
She shrugs. “Not really.”
You wait.
Then: “Okay. Maybe a little.”
You beckon her to your table, and Ellie takes off her coat and her scarf before sitting down on the chair. Once you’re both sat, she pulls up her sleeve just enough to reveal a thin line of red along her left forearm, reopened from an older wound, one you treated long ago. It looks unintentional, somehow, in the way one can be careless with a healing cut.
“Hmm,” you say, turning the lamp on as you look at it. “You should’ve let it heal.”
You hope your turn sounds more like medical advice than scolding.
“Yeah,” she replies. “I know.”
There’s something heavy in her voice. Something that she’s not saying.
You say nothing else, taking cotton and antiseptic from your desk drawers and cleaning the wound. You dress it like you usually do, but when you finish, you don’t immediately let her know she’s okay to leave.
“Ellie,” you call carefully, testing the sound of her name like it was something fragile. “You don’t have to keep doing this.”
She stiffens. “Doing what?”
You choose your next words carefully, hoping she takes it at face value and not anything else.
“Coming back here hurt.”
For a moment, you brace yourself for an accusation and the sound of her boots hitting the floor as she leaves. You thought she might snap, throw up a wall you spent so much time trying to knock down. Instead, Ellie looks down at her arm. At the fresh bandage. At your hands, still hovering over her skin, warm but unsure whether to let go.
There’s a pause before she says, “...It’s easier.”
“Easier? Than what?”
She shakes her head, looking down now as if her boots are the most interesting thing in the world. “Doesn’t matter.”
It did matter, though. You both knew it did.
But you nodded anyway, choosing not to disagree.
“Okay,” you say softly. “Still. Sit with me for a minute.”
And she did.
Ellie doesn’t rush this when she leaves this time. She takes her time, putting her coat and her scarf back on before getting up to go. She pauses at the door, fingers lingering against the frame like she was grounding herself.
“Hey,” she calls, not looking back. “You’re…good. At what you do.”
You giggle, soft and small. “So are you, Ellie.”
She frowns at your words. “At what, exactly?”
You shrug, setting your hands on your knees. “Surviving.”
Ellie answers you with a short laugh, and you exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.
The laugh she gives you before she leaves is reassuring more than it is unfamiliar. You look at where she stood before she left, trying to remember the laugh she let out before it fades from memory completely, especially since Ellie hides more often than she should. You sigh, closing your eyes, letting the exhaustion of the day wash through you. While you think of the girl you just had in your chair, you hope that the price of vulnerability was enough to afford Ellie peace—if not anywhere else, at least in the four walls of the infirmary, right where you are.