vaccination | TLV

Ellie's awake now. She scrubs a hand over her face to give herself a moment to process.

"First thing's first: you're not in trouble with me. Okay? You can relax. So take a seat, B."

Now there's a flicker of reaction, though it's uncertainty. He unbends enough to come sit gingerly on her couch. He does, in fact, drop the flesh hand to rest on one of those blankets. "I should be. I killed people I wasn't assigned to."

Funny how there's so much to unpack in so few words. Ellie sighs, sitting down on the other end of the couch.

"First of all, you're not ever going to be assigned to kill people again. Only in self defense, or... I don't know, if someone's trying to kill me. Those sorts of situations."

It's not always that black and white, but it's a start.

"Secondly, just... what happened?"

Before she simply tells him it doesn't count.

"My arm was magic. There were people who wanted that magic. So they kept trying to corner me to take it." They've still got some damage under their clothes, things still healing, but it's not too bad. "They weren't expecting someone trained like I am."

That makes it easy, then. Ellie angles herself towards him, giving him her full attention, and shakes her head when he's done.

"Then that's their own damn fault. You were defending yourself. Like I just said, B. If it's you or them, you have to protect yourself. It's okay."

He looks briefly uncertain, but if anyone was going to punish him for it, it'd be his warden, so.... "If you're. Sure." He knows there was at least one he killed just because he didn't want to leave a witness. That wasn't self-defense, that was programming.

"What if one was already down," he says after a moment more, looking down at his hand digging into the blanket. "And I killed him, anyway."

"Loose ends are dangerous. You didn't go out and hunt people down like rabbits, B. You protected yourself." And none of it really matters, does it? But she knows he sees it differently. It's not the time for that discussion again.

"It's okay. I would have done the same thing. I'm just sorry you were put in a position where you had to do it."

He finally loses his stiff stance and lets go of the blanket, sagging forward to put his head into his hands, elbows braced on his knees. "Okay," he says. "Okay. If you're sure it's not. Bad." He doesn't want to get her in trouble, either, for his mistakes. He isn't sure if that's a thing, but he's been so careful not to get in trouble, that he really doesn't know for sure.

Ellie purposely bounces on the sofa a bit as she scoots a little closer, so he knows she's doing it, near enough to be able to try and reach a hand out to put on his back.

"It's okay, you didn't do anything bad," she confirms. "You gonna be all right, B?"

"I don't know." It's a relief to know he's not going to be punished, but for some reason he still feels bad. He doesn't know what the feeling even is, besides bad. Maybe it's related to the birthday thing, which is clearly still adding sand to the gears of his brain. "I have a birthday," he says after a pause. "Steve made me cupcakes."

"Yeah? That's cool," she says, and kicks herself for not looking at his stupid birth date in the file. Of course he has a birthday. Everyone does.

"You're like, what--five hundred, now?"

He doesn't take the bait into levity, not right now. "Ninety-eight. Steve told me." He lets his hands fall from his face, hanging down between his knees, looking at the floor. "I don't know what to do with it. With that. Having a birthday."

"Everyone has a birthday. That includes you, too. You didn't just pop out of a lab or whatever, B. You come from a long line of humans."

An undeniable truth.

He makes a soft, maybe-annoyed noise in the back of his throat. Human. Sort of-- maybe at one point, maybe now without the serum. We have left humanity behind.

Person isn't the same thing. "It's not. It's. I don't know what to do with it."

"You don't have to know," she says. "That's okay. Lots of people don't give a shit about their birthdays. But you can make it a thing, you know? A day where, if people want to celebrate you, they can. And I think you're lucky enough to have a few people that would, if they knew the date. I kinda dropped the ball there, B. Buuuut, you know. We can do belated birthday stuff."

Well.

"If you want?"

Why would anyone want to celebrate him? Christ. He just killed nine people. He's not a person. (He's not.)

"No candles and singing," B says, having gotten that much out of Rogers in the midst of his freak-out. "But if you wanna. Explore somewhere, or something. Not gonna say no." Maybe it will be a distraction. He'll take a distracton.

He pauses. "Maybe somewhere not hard to get to." He's still healing.

"Not hard to get to? What do you mean?"

That's the question she asks rather than making some jab about him not wanting to hear her sing.

"I don't have my serum. I wasn't as effective in the fights, and I don't heal as fast." He says it matter-of-factly, as if it's just par for the course that he's walking around with the remaining wounds from killing nine people. "Steve will probably get grumpy with me if I open the cuts up again. Exploring things with you."

Jesus Christ. Ellie's mouth turns into the perfect upside down U as she frowns at him. She looks more upset about this than the whole murder thing.

Which is because she is more upset about this than the murders.

"Where? Are you okay? Did you have them looked at?"

"Ellie. I'm fine. I know how to deal with wounds that impede functionality." He does lift his three layers of shirt, though, to show her the clean bandage over his ribs. "There's one on my left leg and right arm. There might have been a cracked rib, but I think it's mostly knitted up now." And there's nothing to do for ribs but wrap them, anyway.

"Don't you Ellie me," she chides lightly, rolling her eyes. "But you're right, we won't be doing anything crazy with those injuries. I'll figure out something fun for us to do."

She thinks she knows him pretty well, by now. Shouldn't be too hard. Though, a thought does come to mind.

"... you do know that your safety comes first before anyone else's, don't you? I'm always gonna wanna know if you're okay, and if someone comes at you for whatever reason? Fuck 'em. They get what they deserve."

He looks kind of warily skeptical of that, as he pulls his shirts back down. But he says, "Okay." Because it's definitely not worth arguing about, even though he's pretty sure her safety and Steve's and Godric's, and a lot of other people's, are going to be much, much more important than his own.

Then, because he can recognize now-- with the report and its unexpected results behind him-- that she looks like she just rolled out of bed, he adds, "I should probably. Let you get back to sleep."

Ellie eyes him, knowing that okay doesn't necessarily mean he gets why she's saying what she's saying.

"I should have been up, anyway," she says, rubbing her face, and catching a whiff of--herself? Gross. "It's probably time to eat, and I think you could use some company for a while longer. So, give me like ten minutes to shower and change my clothes and we can go see what there is to eat?"

Smart girl. He absolutely doesn't get it. But this is okay, he can wait, and he's not generally one to say no to company and food. So he settles a little more on her couch, ready to be patient. "Sure."

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