The 1st Quarter Quell

Chapter 16 - Come As You Are

It's extremely worrying to see Saffron in this ulterior mindset and extremely haunting for me to see, especially since I'd spent time with a bubbly little girl in Training. But seeing her wipe the blood off of her sword onto her sleeve is too much. She looks merciless, intimidating for such a little thing. I have to look away. 

"Saffron, what're you doing here?" Savera asks as Green-Eyes runs over to the dead beast, doing something with her whip and the charged horn of the animal. I'm suspicious of her, but I'm too concerned with the worrying appearance of Saffron after all this time.

"You guys looked like you could use some help, so I thought I'd give you some." She says bluntly, her voice devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Her dark eyes no longer look full of life, just empty, cold and callous, something of a polar opposite as to what she was a few days ago.

"Well we could've handled it-"

"What are you playing at Saffron?" I snap, the anger evident in my voice as I stare right into her eyes, trying to see what angle she's working at. 

"Althea," she sighs, "I see why you're slightly upset-"

"No," scoff, "I'm not upset, I'm just extremely confused. I don't see what you're trying to achieve by acting so differently."

"I had to get your trust - if I showed you I knew what I was doing you wouldn't trust me, something you did yourself when you went in that simulator in front of me." I didn't like the look on her face when she proved a point. In fact, I wanted to slap the smug look off of her face.

I have to admit, she's right when she says I did it myself, it's just tactics. I just feel slightly betrayed -  I wanted to make sure she was okay, I made the effort of teaching her valuable skills, but she knew it already. Seems like wasted time to me.

"If you wanted to be Allies then why didn't you just say so?" I ask shaking my head, the concept of her facade confusing me beyond measure. 

"Don't blame me for my choice of methods, you all have your own by the looks of it." Saffron says with narrowed eyes. Just talking to her is making me angry, especially when everything she's saying is right. We've all got our own approaches, who am I to shoot her down for her's?

"For now, Allies or not," Savera starts as she gets in between the two of us, preventing us from being close enough to fight or worse. "We need to get out of here, because we've lost Three." She points to the spot where Green-Eyes once was, next to the dead beast, the electrical charge seemingly gone with her. 

I don't trust Three with that whip and charge, not one bit. I don't like the fact that she's spent time with us, knowing our tactics, more so that she treated us as a means to her own selfish ends. We're a team, even though she made it clear she was leaving after this, but I just didn't expect her exit to be this worrying.

"Damn it," I grind my teeth together in frustration at Green-Eyes' sneaky ways, and I look back to Saffron, "Fine, you can stick with us, but if you cross us in any way I'll make it easy for the Careers and kill you myself."

~

The next few days were spent on the run from the Careers; everywhere we seemed to settle for even the shortest amount of time, they'd never be too far behind, and we made sure to light our food fires during the day for when we set traps for the animals that roamed here. Apparently the animals were suited to desert living, and their meat was tender and succulent, obviously they'd had a decent supply of water for their meat to be that good.

With Saffron's help, we were able to clear up any mess, including the footprints we'd left in the sand and ash-covered ground which we walked on everywhere we went. She helped me hunt, setting up traps and snares and then disbanding them once they'd been used or rendered useless.