Ellie looks up again abruptly as Derrica touches her jaw, looking from her arm up to Derrica's face. She's pressing, pushing, and Ellie doesn't know what to give her, what to tell her. Not for the first time, she wonders if there's something broken inside her.

Because -- sure, a regular person would be scared, right? Shaky, in need of comfort. To come down from the shock, to process the pain and fear of almost dying. But she and Abby- she can't remember the last time either of them were like that.

Because this happens constantly, and the only way to mentally cope with that is to sew yourself up, grit your teeth against the pain and keep moving. To joke with your patrol partner over cooling corpses and swap stories about the times you thought you were completely and utterly fucked, and still made it out alive.

"I swear I'm not trying to act brave," Ellie says, shaking her head slowly, and puts her teeth in her bottom lip, lowering her voice so it's clear that her words are just for Derrica.

"It's like- a gravedigger seeing a dead body. Yeah, if you're not used to it, it's the kind of thing that might fuck you up for a long time. But this- fighting infected, getting hurt, almost dying? This was every single day. This was my normal. And it's freaking you out and I'm sorry. But the thing that's freaking me out right now is you being here."