( GRACE VAN PATTEN, SHE/HER, CIS WOMAN, TWENTY-SEVEN. ) have you crossed paths with GEORGIA WALLACE in new eden? people describe them like A LANTERN SPILLING GOLD INTO A DARK ROOM, SUBTLE SCARS ON SOFT SKIN, THE SCENT OF RAIN SOAKED ON COLD STONE—the kind of details you notice when you’re watching someone closely. they’ve survived long enough to claim a place as a MEDIC, operating out of RIVERSIDE. depending on who you ask, they’re MERCIFUL or just as easily HAUNTED when things go wrong. these days, they keep to THE RIVER CHURCH at least, that’s where they’re usually spotted. around the city, they’re known as THE MEDIATOR interesting, isn’t it? survival has a way of making everyone memorable.
georgia wallace was twelve years old when the world ended, old enough to remember what life sounded like before it broke. she grew up in a home shaped by constant arguments, where keeping the peace meant staying quiet and learning to read the room. conflict made her cautious long before the apocalypse ever did.
the collapse froze something in her. because the world ended while she was still a child, part of georgia never quite learned how to exist without bracing for disaster. even now, she carries the same instinct to soften tension and calm situations before they erupt, as if she is still that girl waiting for the noise to stop.
when the outbreak began, her father died in the earliest days. the grief that followed was tangled and confusing, threaded with a relief she was ashamed to feel. his death meant the arguments stopped. the house went quiet in a way it never had before. for the first time, she did not have to anticipate his moods or stand between raised voices. the world was ending, but something in her life had finally gone still. she has carried the guilt of that relief ever since.
she fled soon after with her mother, spending nearly two years in a survivor camp that felt stable enough to believe in. when it fell to the infected, georgia survived. her mother did not. she was fourteen when she buried her, and that loss taught her how temporary safety could be.
an abandoned hospital became her longest refuge. georgia spent years there, longer than anywhere she had lived since the collapse, learning medicine from salvaged textbooks and hard experience. she became known for steady hands and a calming presence, even when fear pressed close. when the hospital was eventually lost, not in a single night but slowly, she ran again.
the years after the hospital were some of the hardest of her life. georgia moved between small groups and temporary settlements, never staying long enough to call anywhere home. she treated injuries in exchange for food, shelter, or protection, learning how quickly desperation could turn people against one another. she watched leaders promise safety they could not guarantee and saw communities fracture from the inside long before the infected ever reached them. those years taught her caution, restraint, and the cost of mercy when it was given without limits.
she arrived in new eden at twenty-three, worn down and unwilling to believe in permanence. riverside appealed to her not because it was safe, but because it relied on cooperation rather than force. now twenty-seven, georgia works as a medic, merciful by nature and haunted by the people and places she could not save. she believes peace is worth protecting, even when experience tells her how easily it can be lost.
