The Swan's Song.

Chapter 14

"No reconstituting? Raw?" Asked Ava. Callie and Rita nodded, recounting how Swan had eaten his MRE.

Instead of thinking it was disgusting, or laughable, or any other sort of thing, Ava was... intrigued about the situation.

Callie and Rita had come by to her room to hang out for a bit. Ana was out doing a piece of internet training and thus, the trio sat in her room to speak.

"Oh." She said. Ava was smart enough to know that Swan didn't eat his MRE's that way simply because he was weird. He most likely ate it out of habit, due to the conditions he lived in.

And if he did that enough to where he could normally eat an MRE like some sort of monster would, then what else would he have suffered through besides the things he admitted?

"Huh." Said the wolf. To eat an MRE... cold and unheated? Ava raised a brow. This line of thinking was new after the tumultuous past few days.

Had almost all of his actions and way of thinking been adaptations for survival? Had they been trained into him because it was necessary to live?

Ava didn't know, and she knew that the right answers would only come from one source.

"Yeah. Weird, right? He may speak weirdly, but he's... weird." Said Callie. The shark nodded, furrowing her brow.

"He's just weird." She said. Rita frowned, and then shrugged.

"But is he any weirder than Phantom?" Asked the snow leopard. Ava shook her head after a brief moment of thinking, realizing that she hadn't had much time spent around the infiltrator fox.

And similarly, she hadn't spent any time with Swan besides insulting him.

"Hmmm." Ava brought a finger to her muzzle, tapping her chin as her brain began to grind its metaphorical gears.

"I mean... I guess not. But he's got a messed-up mind. He's a little imp." Said Ava. Rita cocked her head.

"As if. The way I see it, he's just like we are. Do you think he doesn't suffer from the same issues as us? I mean, at least we still have friends to talk to if you catch my drift." Said Rita. Ava knew that Rita would be the most amenable to Swan, as she could probably see things from a medical professional's point of view.

The snow leopard was always willing to give second chances, as her job was trying to give wounded soldiers a second chance at living.

"You want to give him the benefit of the doubt, Rita? You barely talked to him." Said Callie.

"Same as you, Ava. You haven't talked to him like me." Said the shark. Ava flattened her ears against her head and cocked it, looking at her Lieutenant with a confused look.

"He won't hurt us. That's established. He won't touch us, but he isn't truthful with us. He's a liar and a manipulator." Said Callie.

"The only things I think I'd trust is when he says how much he despises us and other things he doesn't like. Everything is a fucking lie." Said Callie, frustratedly. Rita raised a hand up and slowly rubbed Callie's back in a soothing motion.

"It's okay, Cal. It's okay." Said Rita with a sad face. The shark sighed and brought a hand to her forehead, eventually going to shake her head.

"It's Brixley. It all circles around her." She said. Ava raised a brow; hearing Callie speak in a negative light about the General for the first time ever.

"She wants him here. She won't send him off." Said Callie. The shark shook her head again and Ava looked down at her black furred hands, patting down disturbed fur on them.