Julie finally leaves Daisy’s room– not that Daisy was clingy or starving for attention, self-sufficient woman that she is. Though Arcade really should write the woman more often. Hell, Julie would love to write to her. It had been wonderful to sit and talk with Daisy, ease some weight off her feet and enjoy the lemon tea, tart and sour with hibiscus and rosehips and really, she should write simply to ask what trader she got the tea from…

But that’s distracting her from the matter at hand. Julie loops her thumbs in her pockets, boots crunching on the cooling asphalt, night breeze in her nostrils. Measuring every step until she reaches the home of her possibly least favorite doctor.

Ada answers at the first knock, as if she had been doing some pacing herself. By the heavens, but the woman is wearing a grungy white shirt with the distinctive rust-spatter of old blood. Julie barely contains her cringe as the other woman pulls her into an over-familiar hug, palm thumping just shy of her spine.

“Still wearing the spikes? Looks good, Julie. You look real good.” Voice fast, little chirp on the edges, that same chip on her front tooth that she never got fixed. The same comfortable, cringe-inducing mess that Julie remembers.

The same heart-flipping response, remembering that chipped tooth on her earlobe, long nights in the clinic and the friendly arguments over whose turn it was to make coffee, the way Ada would sneak off for her smoke break with Beatrix and the other guards and even a few of the doctors and volunteers that Julie finally, finally convinced to do at least fifteen feet beyond the Fort’s walls and to remove their coats before indulging–

“I brought the texts you requested. Please understand that this is a loan only, as we are expecting new trainees in a few months.” Warm, brisk, the sort of voice she uses for that blend of empathy and strength when she has to break bad news and struggles to maintain her professional facade. Ada quirks an eyebrow. Recognizes the deflection.

“I’ll send them to you with the next courier, then. Got a lady expecting a baby soon enough.”

Julie frowns. “If you lack confidence in your skill, you know we happily accept referrals–”

“Cool it, Julie. I know I’m a lousy hack, alright?” Ada sighs, deflates in on herself like an empty IV bag with all the drip gone out. “I gave up on saving the world long ago. Got outta the game before my heart got pulped. Scrubbing rads, stitching up drifters with the Viper or Jackal marks still on their skin, making like I believe their sob stories– hardly worth the effort to sterilize the instruments between meatbags.” She frowns, chin jutting stubborn and ruffling one hand through her hair so it spikes and sticks out on the edges. “I’ve been telling the lady and her husband they’re better off going to the Fort too. But if she delivers early, if something comes up or they can’t make the trip, I figure I better be reviewing my obstetrics.”

A pause, three heartbeats in length.

“Julie. You hurt for everyone. That’s one of the things I admire about you. I’m not you. But even I got my limits,” Ada says, holding out her hand as if to take Julie’s, as if it’s so easy to slip back to old patterns and laughter tangling in the dark amid shared blankets–

But she stops. Steps away. Moving herself where Julie’s no longer in arm’s reach.

On the road, she met Levi - in an abandoned gas station, to be exact, where they had both sought shelter for the night. Scared the piss out of each other, nearly shot each other, and became best friends.

Levi was another runaway, a Mormon kid from another small settlement some miles to the south. They made it a habit, or you might say a tradition, to hide out in old gas stations and convenience stores, and smoke and look at the stars and invent new curses for the growing inconvenience of the NCR in what was once just free, open desert.

And it was Levi who said, when Ada was grousing about her hair one day, “So cut it off then.”

Her mother never cut the girls’ hair, and the idea that she could was brand new to Ada. It had never even occurred to her that she hated her hair, well past her waist at this point and usually bound in a long careless braid; it was just there, a perpetual annoyance.

Ada salvaged a pair of scissors from the gas station they were holed up in at the time, rubbed a circle in the dust of the grimy bathroom mirror, took a deep breath and chopped her braid off.

There was something horrifying about the look of it in her hand. She dropped it as though it were a snake.

Then she looked in the mirror.

And she kept cutting, clipping what was left to a more-or-less uniform two inches, as best the dull scissors could manage. It took a while.

When she decided she was finished, Ada stared at the face in the grimy mirror. The square-jawed girl with pale lips and buck teeth and an odd nose, not the pretty one, Myra was the pretty one, but Ada stared and stared like she had never seen her own face before. And for the first time in her life, she liked it.

For several years, she and Levi drifted together, getting by selling chems and doing odd jobs and petty crime, and keeping well out of the way of the NCR.

Levi used to talk about becoming a Ranger someday, but Ada always figured it was just that, talk, and was stunned when Levi told her he wanted to enlist. He tried to convince her to join up with him.

Ada refused.

Levi joined the Army, and Ada traveled east, hoping to stay ahead of the NCR’s push, which proved impossible. She was still making decent money from chems, but was starting to feel like she needed something more solid, and used her savings to buy a pack brahmin, thinking she could start a legitimate caravan.

Medicine had never occurred to her, but when she wandered into the town of Novac with a mediocre assortment of goods, Jeannie May greeted her with, “You wouldn’t happen to be a doctor, would you? We could really use a doctor around here.” Without blinking, Ada replied, “Yes, I’m a doctor.”

And that was that. Medical expertise was scarce enough in the southern Mojave region, and Ada’s literacy allowed her to piece together a working skill set from whatever pre-war medical literature she could find. She used to travel in a circuit between Novac and Nipton, offering her services at the farmsteads in between, but after Nipton was taken by the Legion, she decided to hole up in Novac for a while.

Novac’s all right. Ada’s an outsider there, but she’s used to that. She's never had much desire for a romantic or sexual relationship. Companionship is nice, but in her experience a true friend isn't something you stumble across every day of the week. Sometimes she thinks about Levi, wonders if he ever made Ranger. But that chapter of her life is over. She doesn't expect she'll ever see him again.

Now she's Dr. Straus of Novac. An outside, an oddity. Her sharp, dry sense of humor seems to throw most people for a loop, like they can’t figure out when she’s joking and when she’s serious. Not that anyone in Novac really tries. They all just think she’s strange and prickly and a little scary.