(no subject)

[and_survive]

She'd been tracking the deer for an hour, and she didn't know why, exactly.

She must have had some idea this is what she meant to do when she found herself leaving the city that morning, because she'd stopped at her storage unit and collected her weapons, loading the backpack that now usually held school books with the tools of survival that had always sat beside her comics and her joke books.

Somehow, it sat better on her back like that. That was probably messed up.

But then, so was everything in this place. Messed up in how it was unmessed up, like someone had rolled back the clock on disaster. Made civilization come back. And Riley. Riley was back now, too, and Ellie... it wasn't accurate to say she didn't know how she felt. She felt everything, all at once, and that was the problem. She wanted to do nothing but be with Riley; she couldn't bear to be around Riley. She wanted nothing more than to talk endlessly with her, do everything in the city with her; she couldn't look at Riley without seeing everything that had happened, everything that Riley didn't know about.

It got so the noise in her head was as loud as the city and suddenly the city was driving her out of her mind, like the two noises were combining, and so she'd skipped school and came out... here. The countryside.

And it was better. It was quiet. It didn't seem to expect anything from her except that she be in it. She'd shot a rabbit, and tied it to her bag for lunch.

And then she'd found the deer tracks, and even though she didn't need the food, had no way of getting it back or doing anything with it if she brought it down, she'd stalked it through the forest, slowly and persistently following it. A glimpse here, a cautious step, a startle, another pursuit, until she had it fully in her sights, bow drawn taut.

She didn't fire. She stared at the deer until her arm ached with the strain of holding the bow at full draw, until there was no way she'd hit it anyway, she was shaking and wavering so. Hunting the deer had calmed her, but what would killing her do? Was this her now, killing when no killing needed to be done?

She relaxed the string without firing, and stood deliberately on a twig. "See you later, girl," she said, watching the deer startle and run and jump. Scared, but graceful, like being scared was the most natural thing in the world.

Probably it was.

She walked to a log by the stream the deer had been drinking from and sat down, bow across her knees, and watched the water go past.

Comments

[and_survive]

"I should keep my hand in, anyway," she said. "I could've taken that deer earlier, for sure, but if it'd been a harder shot... it's been a while."

Since she'd had to shoot anything. But if you had to shoot something, you had to be ready to shoot something.

"I thought about trying that gun club, in town? But I don't think they're exactly set up for people to come in and shoot bows."

[vocalfuel]

"Probably not," I say, one corner of my mouth quirking up. "I've never been." I wonder sometimes if I should. I'm as good with my bow as ever, but it's been a long time now since I've shot a gun, and I was never as comfortable with one anyway. When there's no telling what could happen around here, it might be a good idea to make sure I'm not too rusty, just in case it comes to that. "You had a gun, the day you got here. You good with one of those, too?"

[and_survive]

"Hell yeah I am," she said, automatically compelled to talk herself up, somehow, even though the circumstances of how she got so good with a gun didn't exactly bear scrutiny. She'd gotten good with the bow hunting for food, mostly; she'd used it for the other stuff but the practice had been hunting.

Guns... mostly her experience with guns was against other people with guns.

"Bows are quieter, but sometimes... sometimes you just need the stopping power. Point and shoot. Bang."

It was more of a philosophical bang than an exclamation, less enthusiastic than her first claim of competence. Just... bang. And the guy on the other end of it fell down. She'd gotten very used to it, and didn't always know how to feel about having gotten very used to it.

[vocalfuel]

I make a soft sound of agreement, wondering if maybe that's what I'm not so fond of about them. The stopping power. I've needed it, and it's saved my life, but it's ended others, and at my hand. It's not like I couldn't say the same and then some about my bow, but it feels different. There's less finesse involved. It gives the other person less of a chance, messy and brutal instead of clean and elegant. Of course, there's death either way, but I think it's because there's been so much of it that those differences seem important.

"I had to learn once," I say, and I'm not sure why. "Showed up with one. But I haven't used it since."

[and_survive]

"I went to this dumb military prep, once, trying to turn us all into good little soldiers, and they tried to teach us," she said, making a face as she thought about it. The group home was shitty, but not that shitty, comparatively. Didn't make her any more inclined to stay, but she tried to keep it in mind.

She didn't really manage that a lot when she was actually there.

"But I didn't really learn until- until you're actually in it, y'know?"

Until there was someone on the other end of it, and they were trying to kill you as much as you were trying to kill them.

[vocalfuel]

"I know," I say, nodding once. "You can do target practice and clean and reassemble a gun as many times as you want, but none of that prepares you for using one because you have to." They'd done what they could in Thirteen, trying to get us as ready as we could be, but it still wasn't the same. The dumb military prep she's mentioned doesn't seem like it was too different. I almost, almost manage a flicker of a smile anyway, thinking about how long it's been since someone called me Soldier Everdeen. That's not something I miss.

[and_survive]

"Yeah. Yeah. Until it's just you or..."

Them. Whoever it was trying to kill you, or that you had to take out because they would be trying to kill you if they knew you were there. Easier with the gun than the knife, at least. And not just because everyone she'd ever had to use the knife on had been twice her fucking size.

"Or," she concluded. Just, or. "And I never got the marching. No one marches in a fight, so why all the fucking marching?"

[vocalfuel]

"So they can sleep easier at night, maybe," I say, head tilting to the side, thoughtful. I've never really thought about it before, but it's the only thing I can come up with. "Pretend that it's something ordered and official when it's just... chaos." That or echoes in my head even as I speak. I know too well what's on the other side of it, find myself thinking, of all people, of the Capitol woman I killed when we broke into her house, whose boots I took. Of all the lives I've ended, that might be one of the most unsettling.

[and_survive]

"...I never thought of it like that," she said, thinking of what the Quarantine Zone had been like. Order layered over chaos like wallpaper over massive cracks in the wall. That seemed pretty accurate, to her.

"All those rules just so they can say there are rules and everything's going to be okay. Keeping everyone in line by keeping them in a line. Or something."

[vocalfuel]

"Yeah," I say, "something like that." Like Thirteen pretending to be so much better than the Capitol but torturing my stylists, and Coin sending Peeta along with the squad in the hopes that he'd kill me, sending Prim into a war zone. At the end of the day, there's not much good about either of them, but that semblance of decorum goes a long way, makes them feel better about themselves, lulls everyone else into a sense of security. I don't buy it. "Whatever helps them sleep better at night. While the rest of us..."

Don't, in my case, at least not for very long. I've long since grown used to the nightmares that keep me awake. No pretended order could have fought them off.

[and_survive]

"Not so much, huh?" she said, quietly, finding a stick on the ground and poking the ground with it. "Yeah, I get that."

It was a whole raft of factors. Getting used to a bed, for one thing. She'd thought it would've just been easy, been a relief, like, finally, but it'd turned out weird as hell. Then there were the dreams. She hadn't had so many while things had been happening, but now it was quiet it was like her brain had decided to maintain an even level of terror by throwing stuff at her in the night. It was bullshit.

[vocalfuel]

"Not in a long time," I say. In the Games, sleep had been a necessity, but so had limiting it. Too much or too little could both be the difference between life and death, depending. And after — well, after, you're still there, it's just all in your head, and it's usually worse. Going to bed is like an instant replay of everything I've done wrong, every life I've taken, every secret I've kept. I've at least gotten better at not waking up screaming, for Prim's sake. "Years. Which is... weird, to think about."

[and_survive]

"Years? Jeez, that's reassuring," she said, wincing slightly, but with a bluntly joking tone; she'd kind of hoped there was a chance that stuff would fade, but apparently not. So she made a joke of directness, just blurted it out, which she guessed was one way of coping.

[vocalfuel]

"Hate to break it to you, but yeah," I say, wry, mouth twisting to the side. It's easier, talking about it like this, rather than the details of the nightmares or the way it feels to wake up drenched in sweat, my heart racing. Whatever experience of her own Ellie has, I think those are things she'd know for herself. "Could be different for everyone, though."