Work Text:
Another Time
ALTERNATE TITLE: She’s An Old Rumor
Dina wakes up to frantic knocking on the window. Fucking Jesse , she thinks, as she shuffles and grumbles and rubs her eyes. I swear, if he wants us to get back together again—
But when she opens the glass pane, it isn’t Jesse standing outside. It’s Ellie. And she’s covered in blood.
Before Dina can scream, Ellie presses a dirt-spattered, blood-caked hand into her mouth, and presses a finger to her own lips.
“Please,” she mouths, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. “Please.”
Shaking, all traces of sleep gone, Dina helps pull her inside. Ellie struggles, a choked cry of pain tearing out of her throat when she twists her side. After settling her down on Dina’s bed, Dina rushes to turn on the light.
Oh god.
Her shirt, ripped off. A combination of cuts and bruises, riddling her body, leaving no part of her unmarred. The worst part is, the blood looks and smells off. Grittier, less metallic than those of human’s. Which means: “Ellie, was it the infected?” Ellie stares straight ahead, her breathing weak and uneven. “Ellie!”
“I—I didn’t know—they told me it was abandoned—“ Dina kneels down in front of her, cups her cheek. Ellie keeps on rambling, repeating the same word, over and over. Then, Dina says a soft hey, and Ellie’s unfocused eyes search Dina’s face. With a swallow, she says, “There were too many of them.”
“Ellie, I’m going to check for concussions, alright?” Dina asks, because a head injury is the least visible and the most dangerous. With another gentle probing, she has Ellie follow Dina’s moving finger, then recite her full name, how old she is, and where they are. Ellie passes the test. Meaning, her messy mind isn’t due to an injury; it’s due to shock. “We have to take you to the clinic.”
“No.”
“But—Ellie—”
“Joel. You’ve gotta find Joel.”
“Why—”
“Please.”
There it is again, that word.
Ellie isn’t the type to beg—not even in a joking matter. The only other time she said it, they were fourteen, and Ellie confessed to liking girls. “Please,” she said, avoiding Dina’s gaze. “Don’t think I’m weird or anything—”
“What? Ellie, dude, no!” Dina bumped her fist against Ellie’s shoulder. “Of course not! Hell, I get it!”
“You do?”
Dina’s eyes widened. But it was too late. And besides, she didn’t want to keep it a secret—not from her closest, truest friend. “I do,” she said. “I like girls too.”
“Oh. Okay.” Ellie massaged her two fingers. “Cool.” (Dina hoped and feared she’d ask more questions, especially ones such as, How did you know ? And also, Do you like a girl now ?)
She’s doing the same now, but the action is slow, automatic. “Joel—he can fix this, I know he can, I have to—” She tries to stand up, only to wince and fall down on the bed again, her hand pressing to her side. “Dina, help me.”
“Yeah, no.”
“Dina—”
“I’ll get Joel to come here, but only after I take care of you.”
Ellie frowns. “Take—take care of me?”
“Ellie. Look at yourself.”
Ellie does as told. Her face slackens. “Oh,” she says, soft. “I—I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Maybe Dina’s amatuer diagnosis is incorrect; maybe Ellie does have a concussion. “Just shut up already.”
With Dina’s help, Ellie tries to strip off her clothes in the old-fashioned way. But Dina can’t stand hearing her hisses and groans, so she uses a pair of scissors to cut off Ellie’s clothing, piece by piece, starting with her arm sleeves. When she gets to Ellie’s upper chest, she hesitates, and Ellie chuckles. “Hey, it’s not how I’d imagine you undressing me, but—” She shrugs with her good shoulder.
“What did I tell you about shutting up?” says Dina.
She keeps her touch to a minimum, partly out of respect, and partly out of fear of worsening Ellie’s injury. When she gets to Ellie’s lower body, above her hips, she notices a strange tear. Little crescent dots, lining in a curve. Dina’s blood chills.
She tugs away the fabric, ignoring Ellie’s grunt and wheeze.
Gasping, she presses her shaking hand to her mouth.
Frowning, Ellie looks down, and the pain in her face melts away. “Oh,” she says.
“Ellie… you…”
“I got bit.” Dina bites her bottom lip, her hand going to her chest, wishing she could rip her heart out and throw it away so she could rationalize this without her hurricane of feelings getting in her way. “Shit.”
“Ellie…” There’s an established protocol for this. Every single one of Jackson’s civilians are trained to handle a person after a bite. Being a patroller herself, Dina should know the steps by heart. But her brain can’t summon them; it’s drawing a blank. Instead, she repeats Ellie’s name, her voice trembling.
Ellie raises her hands, her palms facing Dina. “Listen, Dina—”
“You got bit.”
“I know. I did. But everything’s going to be okay.”
“How can you say that?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Ellie—”
“I will .” Dina looks at her more closely. Her eyes are clearer, and yes, there is a hint of crazy in there, but that’s usual for someone who’s dealt with the infected. She’s damp, but she’s not sweating anymore. Her breathing’s normal, her body still—not twitching, not jittering, not acting like what Maria once called “an overcharged, broken toy.” Most importantly, she’s not showing signs of aggression. In fact, when she grabs Dina’s hands, her squeezing is gentle, like Dina is a delicate porcelain one too-harsh breath away from cracking. “Dina, hey. Calm down. I’m fine, see?” She places Dina’s hand on her left chest, and her heartbeat bumps against the pads of Dina’s thumb, confirming what Dina knows; she’s healthy. She’s injured, yes, but she’s healthy. “I’m totally, completely fine.”
“You’re, like, bleeding all over my mattress.”
“Okay, so I’m not one-hundred percent fine, but I’m not gonna turn, okay?”
“Not gonna—Ellie, what?” Dina pulls her hands away, racking it against her skull, messing up her bedridden hair. “This is insane. I’ve gotta—” What? Go outside and call for help? Stay, and take care of Ellie herself? Dina has a gun, hidden under her pillow, and she’s quite adept at aiming. But she’s not sure she’ll be able to fire a bullet. Not into Ellie’s head.
“You remember that rumor a few years back? The one about the immune kid?”
“What?”
Ellie has a look that says, C’mon, just humor me for a sec . So Dina does her best to remember. She hears the most details from Eugene, who often went out of Jackson to deal his own trades, and had connections with the outside world; most of them either ex-Fireflies or then-Fireflies. What he told her, and what she afterwards repeated to the rest of her friends, was this: A smuggler was tasked to bring a supposed-immune child from across the country to the biggest Firefly base, since they suspected they could create a cure from said child. However, the smuggler—due to a fit of insanity—killed everyone in that hospital, and no talks about immune kids and vaccines ever popped up again.
The most obvious scenario was that he killed the kid as well, and humanity’s hope for changing this sick world. But that’s if it’s true, which Dina’s not sure of. No one’s ever heard of someone who’s immune. Yes, the process of turning may last minutes for someone and hours for someone else, but in the end, they will turn. It’s inevitable.
The old rumor about the immune kid is just that; an old rumor. A myth. A fairytale, to keep other kids hopeful, to keep them striving for a better future. There is no crazy smuggler, no immune kid.
“Dina…” Except here Ellie is, showing no signs of being infected. And Dina has been in patrol duty for over a year; she knows what to look for, she knows the difference between regular emotions and those stirred by the infection. And Ellie’s hunched shoulders, her drooping eyes, her parted, heavy lips, tell Dina her exhaustion is genuine. “Dina, please… I need Joel.”
Dina continues her original task; brushing off the rest of Ellie’s shirt, cutting off her jeans. Good god, what even happened? Why was Ellie running around outside of Jackson at night, all by herself? She said something about a warehouse, didn’t she? Or was it a bank?
Dina cleans Ellie’s body, stirring herself away from Ellie’s undergarments, stopping when Ellie’s breath hitches and asking if she’s okay. Ellie always composes herself afterward, with one long exhale, and tells Dina to keep going.
Once the process is done, Ellie is bleary, swaying, and bandaged from head to toe—except for her side, where the bite is. She doesn’t complain when Dina maneuvers her to the middle of the bed, and tucks her in like a baby. When Dina presses a kiss to her forehead and tells her to sleep, all Ellie does is hum an affirmative.
***
When Dina pictures a smuggler, she pictures someone lanky, someone with too big coats and yellow teeth and a rotten sense of humor. She pictures someone she should stay away with, someone who hides different secrets in different pockets.
However, when Joel opens the door to his house, she can see him as a smuggler. Not because he likes it, but because he has no other choice. He has his job because he’s trustworthy, and because he can be brutal if needs be.
But is he capable of massacring an entire hospital—especially when it’s striving to cure humanity of its greatest plight?
“Don’t tell anyone,” he tells her, later, sitting on the side of Dina’s bed.
She won’t. Of course she won’t. But something compels her to ask, “Why not?”
His eyes flick to hers, weary and ancient, and she tries to find a cold-blooded murderer in that gaze. She can’t.
Sighing, he tells her everything. Finding her, being tasked to take her to the Firefly base. His rough hand brushes against the front of Ellie’s arm—the one with the chemical burn. And it’s strange, isn’t it, how Ellie—who’s always careful wielding dangerous objects—could somehow accidentally burn herself? Dina remembers how upset Joel had gotten, and thought, God, he really loves her.
There are details he leaves out. Like what happened to their allies and friends, and what they went through in the winter. Dina never asks. She knows it’s not her right.
And then, he gets to the hospital part, and he looks away, his graying hair curtaining his eyes. “They told me they could do it. Make a vaccine, cure the world from the infected. But… Ellie would have to die in order to do that.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Does… Ellie know about it?”
Joel shakes his head. “Not at first, no. But then the rumors started spreading around and…” His shrug is one-shouldered, like Ellie’s. “She asked me about it. I told her. And…” He sighs. “She was mad at me. Understandably so.”
Dina knows about it; she was there to witness their falling out. “But you two are close now?”
His eyes narrow as he looks up. “Yeah, but… it’s never the same, after that. Ellie’s never the same.” Dina notices that too. She’s become more subdued, getting lost in her own head a lot more. She has problems sleeping and eating. If it weren’t for Dina’s teasing and coaxing, she would be lankier and bonier than she already is. “We’ll hide her in her place ‘til she looks good. If anyone asks, we’ll tell them she’s got the flu.”
***
Their plan works. No one suspects something to be wrong with Ellie—at least, not to the extent of immune girls or anything like that. Though, Jesse, being the asshole that he is, keeps making HIV and herpe jokes. Then again, he also tells Dina to tell Ellie to get well soon, so he’s not all that bad.
As for Ellie herself, she seemed startled when she first woke up to find Dina, tending to her wounds. “Did Joel tell—”
“Yes.”
Ellie’s jaw moved, like she was about to ask something, but no questions ever sounded.
There’s a different kind of hesitance, now. A wary kind. Dina tries to place herself in Ellie’s shoes, to understand her better, but she can’t. To imagine herself as humanity’s last hope, to imagine herself having to face the choice of dying in order for everyone else to live at the age of fourteen . It’s too much.
The wounds heal, one by one, leaving nicks and scars in their place. They leave the bite as is, though, with the way Ellie rubs her hand over it, Dina has a feeling she wants to get rid of it. She’ll have to talk to Joel about it later, figure out some way to remove the mark without dangerous chemicals involved.
For now, her attention is focused on getting Ellie into top-shape as soon as she can, and showing her, proving to her, that Dina won’t rat her out, won’t think of her any differently. After handing her a typical Jackson meal—beans, raisin, and a chunky gooey stuff that tastes like dirt—Dina exaggerates a sigh and falls face-first onto the bed, prompting Ellie to hold up her tray. “Goooood,” she says, the pillow muffling her voice, “I’m booooooored.”
“Same,” Ellie says.
Dina wriggles until she’s lying on her side, her elbow propping her up. “So. Here’s what I don’t get.”
“What?”
“Why the hell were you wandering outside Jackson alone at night?”
Ellie’s grip on the tray tightens. “Uh, not important.”
“Like hell it’s not.”
Groaning, Ellie starts eating her food, using her knees to balance the tray. “Seriously, Dina, you don’t wanna know.”
“Was it just for funsies? Were you trying to, I don’t know, challenge your manliness or whatever?” Were you there to punish yourself? Dina forces herself to grin. “Don’t tell me you were meeting someone.”
“Someone?”
“You know, like, a special lover.” Dina wiggles her eyebrows. “As in, someone you’d like to fuck.”
“Dina!”
“What? It’s worth asking!”
“I was there for you, okay?!”
Dina rights herself, her hair tumbling around her face. “Me?” she asks.
“ Yes . You,” says Ellie, holding her fork like it’s a hunting knife. She releases it, then leans back, thumping her back against the bed’s headboard. “Look, I could tell you were bummed out about Jesse. I mean, more so than usual. I might be spitballing here, but it looks like you two are actually broken up this time.”
“We are.”
“And, well, it bothers you,” Ellie says, and yes, she’s right, to an extent. Only, what bothers Dina isn’t her feelings for Jesse. It’s what she doesn’t feel towards him, and what she’s feeling towards someone else.
“So,” continues Ellie, “I wanted to cheer you up. And I heard from a bunch of patrollers that there was an old library, like, two miles to Jackson’s south. And I thought, ‘Why not?’”
“What… were you hoping to find in a library, of all places?” And what does it have to do with me?
At this, Ellie’s face turns into a shade of red that brings out her freckles. Through her lashes, she peeks up at Dina, and says, “Well, a Torah.”
Dina’s breath catches. Talia spoke of Torahs, and the beauty of them, ever since she was little. Though she wasn’t as religious as Talia, Dina wanted to see one herself. She told Ellie so, knowing it would never happen, the same way Ellie would tell Dina about flying a spaceship and going to outer space.
Ellie’s shifting, and squirming, and refusing to meet Dina’s eyes, and changing the subject—”man, you know I can never get used to how shitty Jackson’s food is”—her words stilted, halted, and oh, oh.
Dina can kiss her, right here, right now. She can kiss her, and Ellie would kiss back.
But with the new bite mark, and all of Ellie’s old wounds resurfacing, it wouldn’t be right. So, instead, Dina goes along with her, adding her own complaints to the blandness of Jackson’s meals.
Besides, she can kiss Ellie another time. After all, she’s not planning on leaving her.