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Whispers in the darkness
Jul. 1st, 2007 04:08 amA storm blows in the first night. Makita hasn't been given a new assignment yet, so she huddles in one of her supply caches (just off the Memorial Square) wrapped in a quilt and shivering. It's odd how quickly the body adjusts to being warm, and how poorly it reacts to being forced out into the cold again.
The truth of the matter is that Makita isn't dealing well working by herself. She is fast, quiet, and lethal, and she knows that those qualities make her an excellent scout and independent operative. But at night, in the cold and the dark when sleep eludes her, Makita knows the truth: she is afraid to be alone.
It isn't a normal sort of knowledge; she would never say that she is afraid of anything, much less loneliness. Instead, it is the sort of knowledge that lives down in the bones, the sort that you know without knowing you know. And while during the day, when fighting to stay alive, Makita can ignore it, at night she whispers the list of her dead into the darkness lest they be forgotten, and she fears that it won't be long before that list is all she has.
Makita doesn't fear being alone for the night, or for the week, or even the month. She's done each of those before, and while the month hadn't been much fun she had survived and completed her mission and returned to papa and Proto and the rest; she hadn't been afraid. The fear that coiled quietly in her gut, where it was hard to see, was that she might end up alone forever; that one day she would find that when the mission ends she has no one to return to.
When she first began whispering her list into the darkness when the war began, she would make it all the way through and repeat the names dozens of times before sleep eventually claimed her. But the list has grown so long that now she succumbs to exhaustion before she reaches the end. Sometimes she worries that she's dropped a name, that some brave soul gave their life and now lies forgotten.
Tonight she's too cold, and too miserable, and though can't acknowledge it, too scared to sleep. Dawn finds her still shivering as she whispers her way to the end of her list (Shurik) for the first time in far too long. Makita takes a deep breath and slowly lets one hand extend out from under the quilt to test the air. It's cold, but not cold enough to freeze salt water. Makita's smile is pained: she can do another thing that desperately needs doing.
A shaft of morning light cuts through a break in the storm to warm the tired little girl who lies curled in on herself as she weeps for her dead.
The truth of the matter is that Makita isn't dealing well working by herself. She is fast, quiet, and lethal, and she knows that those qualities make her an excellent scout and independent operative. But at night, in the cold and the dark when sleep eludes her, Makita knows the truth: she is afraid to be alone.
It isn't a normal sort of knowledge; she would never say that she is afraid of anything, much less loneliness. Instead, it is the sort of knowledge that lives down in the bones, the sort that you know without knowing you know. And while during the day, when fighting to stay alive, Makita can ignore it, at night she whispers the list of her dead into the darkness lest they be forgotten, and she fears that it won't be long before that list is all she has.
Makita doesn't fear being alone for the night, or for the week, or even the month. She's done each of those before, and while the month hadn't been much fun she had survived and completed her mission and returned to papa and Proto and the rest; she hadn't been afraid. The fear that coiled quietly in her gut, where it was hard to see, was that she might end up alone forever; that one day she would find that when the mission ends she has no one to return to.
When she first began whispering her list into the darkness when the war began, she would make it all the way through and repeat the names dozens of times before sleep eventually claimed her. But the list has grown so long that now she succumbs to exhaustion before she reaches the end. Sometimes she worries that she's dropped a name, that some brave soul gave their life and now lies forgotten.
Tonight she's too cold, and too miserable, and though can't acknowledge it, too scared to sleep. Dawn finds her still shivering as she whispers her way to the end of her list (Shurik) for the first time in far too long. Makita takes a deep breath and slowly lets one hand extend out from under the quilt to test the air. It's cold, but not cold enough to freeze salt water. Makita's smile is pained: she can do another thing that desperately needs doing.
A shaft of morning light cuts through a break in the storm to warm the tired little girl who lies curled in on herself as she weeps for her dead.
