Rae didn't point out the obvious shortcomings to being one of the non-Immune, and he mentally gave her points for that. One Immune in particular he'd met had been more than vocal about his status as one of those "gifted" with immunity. People like that man and Rae were lucky, but they didn't have to throw it in the faces of people who had lost so much in the last five years. Thankfully, his rescuer this time wasn't like that. "Animal bites are painful enough, but at least they have sharper teeth. I can only imagine how much worse it feels to have a human mouth bite hard enough to break the skin."
And she had a sense of humor, as well. That was always a refreshing change to the long faces he usually saw these days. Not that he didn't understand or was completely oblivious to what a person had lost during this supposed end of the world — he had sob stories of his own, to be true — yet he didn't want what might be his final days to be filled with despair. If he could die laughing, he was doing a good job. Or maybe he was one of the few who had lost his mind when all this went down. Maybe that was the reason for the strange or annoyed looks he always got from other survivors.
Smiling at her response to him, Elliot shook off his inner musings as he listened to the exchange between Rae and the deaf woman. His expression widened into a grin at her quip. "If only that electric personality could manifest itself into a proper weapon. Maybe send some deadly currents through those zombies. Wouldn't that be a sight?" He laughed.
Rae added her contribution to trying to give Aaron some confidence, and he watched as the boy shrugged, sullenly agreeing to the offer of being given shooting lessons. The kid wanted to learn, wanted to get better at protecting himself and his comrades, but he lacked the proper confidence. Elliot wondered if this would be the moment that things would change for Aaron. His moment was bound to come soon.
Somehow his high school nickname sounded awkward on her lips, but it wasn't the time nor the place to wax philosophical about how much he hated his first name. Besides, many survivors considered real names to be irrelevant these days. As far as he knew, Rae was an alias this girl used. His lips twisted into an ironic smile. "It's what I do," he said, echoing the Immune's earlier words to him.