Elizabeth looked over the supplies, trying to estimate how much they'd have for the next battle. Every day, the Vox brought in more and more wounded men and women, and less and less medical goods. Painkillers in particular were becoming particularly scarce, and the impromptu surgeon dreaded the time when she would run out.
Especially for Booker. The man needed the drugs like most needed air, to keep the burning agony at bay, to quiet the rage, and most importantly, to lull him into the quiet meditation that was the closest thing he could get to sleep.
She ran a hand over the operating table, gentle with the tattered, blemished fabric. Elizabeth would have preferred to change the under sheet after each operation, but circumstance would not allow it. In the end, she had to settle with having it washed at the end of every night. But soap and water did little to hide the stains of the past.
Each mark told a story, a life changed, saved or ended. She could still see the marks where she had... changed Booker. Saved wasn't the right word, was it? True, he was alive, he could walk and talk, think and fight, do most things a man was expected to do. But at what cost? Had she truly been justified in what she had done to him? Had she done it for him, or for her?
These questions plagued the young doctor as the memories came flooding back, much as they did almost every night.
"He got shot up somethin' fierce. Might be best to just let 'im die," intoned Fitzroy, pursing her lips, and watching Booker lay limply on the table. Her arms were folded across her chest, a sad, almost bored expression resting on her face.
The man was quite pale now, making the blood that was pooling about him stand out all the more.
"How can you say that?!" snapped Elizabeth, frantically trying to stem the bleeding. "This is all your fault, and you're just going to pass him off?"
The revolutionary simply shrugged. "If he dies for the cause, he died for freedom. Ain't no shame in that,"
"No no no! Booker, don't you die on me!" cried the doctor. The bleeding was getting worse, and his heartbeat was growing more irregular. Without some kind of miracle, Elizabeth knew that this man, the man who had saved her from that tower, who had given up everything and more for her, he was going to die. And that thought ripped at her insides, filling her with a dreadful, leaden sickness.
"This one ain't getting back up. There're a good deal other men that need your' hand sawbones, good, honest, colored men. You can't just sacrifice them just for this here one white fella,"
"I am not going to let him die! There's got to be a way, there's got to-..."
Elizabeth's line of sight slowly traced to the metal exoskeletons that lay strewn about. The vestiges of the building's former life as a Finkton warehouse, they had been hastily shunted aside when the Vox came to inhabit the place. The bulk of the medical goods that originally had prompted the revolutionaries annexation were long gone, but the remnants, being blueprints, instructions and tools, had been left where they been discarded.
Fitzroy followed the young woman's gaze, frowning as she saw the autobodies.
"What in the sam hell do you think you're doin'?"
"Help me move this thing! Now!" yelled Elizabeth, dragging a partially opened crate to the table, hands clenched firmly against the wooden edge.
"You can not be thinkin' of puttin' him in one of them things..."
"Look, either help me, or get out!" was the terse reply as the girl starting yanking odd devices and tools from the innards of the crate, placing them haphazardly on the side table. A paperback manual, unbound save for string, passed through her hands, her eyes glossing over the words therein as she flicked through it.
"...he'd better off a martyr than a-" started Fitzroy, disgust clear in her voice.
"A what!? Huh!? He'd be better off a dead man than a what!?" snarled the young doctor, face flush, lip curled back.
Noting Elizabeth's trembling hands, balled up into tight little fists and shaking at her sides, the Vox Populi looked the girl dead in the eyes. A moment of strained silence passed between the two.
"...You bes' be thankful you gotta lotta lives ridin' on you girl, 'cause anybody else bring that tone with me, they ain't gonna walk away from that," Fitzroy uttered, face twisted into a sneer.
Elizabeth turned her back on the other woman, hurriedly trying to finish her preparations.
"If you're not going to help, then leave. There are other "good, honest" men to save. Leave me to this one,"
Screaming roused Elizabeth from her reverie, the image of Booker's prone form fading from her minds eye. She could hear a man and a woman outside, the woman arguing angrily, the man rebuffing her coldly.
"I told you no,"
"Lemme at the goddamn girl DeWitt!"
"She's sleeping,"
"I don' care, she needs a talkin' to!"
"About what?"
"She's helping the enemy. I know she's been treating Founders 'longside the Vox."
"I don't know what you're talking about Fitzroy, and I don't appreciate you making baseless accusations. I suggest you leave real soon before somebody hears you and gets the wrong sort of idea."
"Why you helping her DeWitt? She's just a privileged little white girl, full of naïve little ideas. She don' know how the real world works."
"She knows just fine,"
"She know just fine when she turned you into that thing? I can see it in your eyes DeWitt. She done stripped you of the things that kept you human, kept you a man. Every day I see a little less of you in there, and a little more of the monster. Pretty soon, you gonna be gone. Only thing'll be left is the beast."
"Leave. Now."
"You know I'm right."
"I said LEAVE!"
The last sentence was punctuated with a heavy thud, and the walls rattled. There was an angry, feminine snort as footsteps faded into the distance.
A sliver of light lanced through the darkness as the door opened, and the hulking shape of Booker let himself in. His bulk was sizable, and in most other building, he'd be forced to stoop, if the doors were large enough to admit the ex-Pinkerton at all.
"Elizabeth? You there?" Booker intoned, lumbering around the room, turning on a few lamps as he went. He moved about with an ugly gracelessness, much as he tried not to. The limbs of the autobody had little in the way of dexterousness, its heavy limbs more suited for raw combat. His knuckles still bore the reddish brown stains of a recent fight, their color near indistinguishable from the ferrous patina of rust.
"Yes, I'm here," she said quietly, stepping out of the gloom.
"Ah," he answered, a mild sense of sheepishness crossing his face. "I guess you heard us arguing. About what Daisy said-"
"She was telling the truth," interrupted Elizabeth faintly, unable to look Booker in the eye.
Booker froze, his features silhouetted by the light.
"...what?"
"About..."
About what I did to you. About how selfish and naïve I was. About everything she said about me.
"...about me treating Founder soldiers," admitted the young women lamely, wringing her hands together, thimble turning between thumb and forefinger.
...you coward.
Elizabeth turned the thimble anxiously, biting her bottom lip. Guilt roiled around in her belly like a snake, and she cast her eyes even further downwards, no longer capable of looking at Booker at all.
"It's certainly something," admitted Booker softly. "To be a doctor first like that. It's one thing to kill a man, but it's something else completely to heal one, especially if he's meant you ill, and you'll earn folks ire just by doing it,"
"Do you..." started Elizabeth, hesitating once more.
Do you hate me?
"Do you think that's wrong?"
Gutless.
Booker shook his head, limping closer.
"If anything, I'm proud of you. It takes a lot of dedication to keep to your principles like that,"
Even if that dedication is what helped put you in that machine...
"Anyway, you'd best head off to bed. You look plenty tired,"
"Y-yeah," mumbled Elizabeth, still looking at her feet. She shuffled off to the makeshift cot in the next room, silently hating herself for her lack of courage.