Remember (A Ruby X Liam Story - The Darkest Minds)

Ruby

Training sucked. She had to work on hand-to-hand combat and then there was prefecting her powers. Ruby had released her hold on Kate for two reasons a) she felt bad and b) she needed a distraction. She had never been this way before, thinking about a boy 24/7, but then agaon she had just been a child when she was taken, and there wasn't much interactions with boys in the camp. All this worring, guilt, and -other feelings- exhausted her.  So in am attempt stop thinking, she would put herself into a position of temporary danger.

None of her sparing partners ever held back. They all knew that if she needed to she would just tell them to stop or if she was in actual danger that the adults would step in. Every grown-up saw her as a tool or a weapon, and a valuable one at that, but none of the kids treated her that way. Although they did fear her, mostly they just treated her as one of them.

Today her sparing partner was Ob, one of her sort-of-friends. Ob was a green and also suprisingly strong. They were very difficult to beat and Ruby had never succeded. It was true that she had improved quite a bit since she had first arrived, but Ob had been training for years now. So no matter how much she improved, she always found herself flat on the mat eventually.

"Ready-" Kate called, fom the sidlines. Both teenagers raised their fiss and bounced on their toes.

"- and start!" Ob threw the first punch, which Ruby managed to block. She threw one back and managed to collide it with their shoulder. The kicked Ruby in the chest and sent her stumbling back in pain. The fight went on like this for nearly ten  minutes, until Ruby once agaon found herself on the mat.

"Again?" She asked, once she could stand again. A small smirk pulled at their mouth and they balled their hands in responce.

*One fight later*

The two child-soldiers had finished training and had desided to head out to the garden.

"You have improved. It was harder to beat you that time." Ob playfullly hit her on the shoulder and the two smiled at each other. "But-" They continued. "- it seemed like something was on your mind. Do you want to take about it?" Ruby shook her head. Ob just nodded. "Okay. I probally wouldn't know what to say anyway." Neither of them spoke for a long time.

(Fun Fact: Ob is short for Obsidien, which is said to release negative emotions. Since I needed to make a charector for Ruby to uses as a punching bag, I thought it was fitting. I also think that I have gotten emotionally attached to them though, so they may come up more in this story.

Word count- 480