halfbreed-hawkins:
Penny half-heartedly hushed him, though as she did so it felt so very wrong. Because she felt it too. That aching need to get attention, to get something done, for the cause. It pulsed in her veins, the more she sat writing, the more arguments with Fraser, the more articles, the more news, the more interactions with fellow students. It made her rage and want to fix whatever had broken, in whatever way she could. That emotion was a festering wound and there was but one fix– rebellion. It sang to her, like a call from the barricades. It taunted her, Lysander, the Note, Greyfield, Lowell, the URN, the results of action and she not belonging to any part of it. She yearned to join the game, like a pup drawn to the hunt. “Wanna know what I think?” Penny’s accent came, rough, thick, spilling off her tongue as she crossed her arms over her stomach. “I’m thinkin’ that in this whole wide fuckin’ castle all I’ve got is you, Kitty, Ains, an’ a few other people on good days. All I’ve got is my pack, an’ I don’t need to join anyone else’s. They keep taunting us Jack, as if we need them. We don’t. Now I’ve not a good record with protests,” the phantom blood stains made her hands itch to wash the invisible stains away, “but as long as I’ve got my pack, got you, we can do it alone. We can handle anythin’. We don’t need their tribe, I’ve one of my own.” Penny hissed out, trailing her fingers over the threadbare leggings she wore, her hair falling into her face, the jingle of soft beads and metal twists that slowly adorned her blonde tresses more and more, the dark patch of inked skin on her arm. She didn’t need Lysander, or the ones with the Note, or anyone else like them. She wasn’t alone, her last protest ended in blood, but with her tribe at her back, she was no longer frightened of the same outcome. “We can handle anything, can’t we?”
Satisfaction settled in Jack’s features as he hungrily drank in every work, shifting closer, pressing their knees together, his heartbeat picking up the pace as he did. “You been practicing Legilimancy, Pen?” He murmured. There were a thousand details to be decided; a million ways this could go wrong--but all of it superseded by the promise of finally leaving the sidelines. “Took the words right out of my head. You know I’m sick of waiting. We’ll do this together.” Penny’s fingers crawled restlessly over her legs, and Jack took one of them, stilling it. It was a small comfort in the midst of too many heavy things. They both needed it. “We’ll find a way to the protest, and we’ll start talking to people. As many people as we can. We’ll get there, and we’ll find out what needs doing, and then we’ll start doing it. And we’ll take care of each other.” There was a moment’s pause where Jack wondered if she was thinking about the same thing he was: the last protest. It was hard not to. For Jack, the day had become an amalgamation of images from countless news articles he’d consumed: images of carnage, of men becoming unrecognizable, of frightened faces and stampeding bodies. Penny’s family’s stories had filled in the gaps, over time. It had been a peaceful crowd. There’d been chanting. Singing. Speeches. Unfortunately, stronger than both the newspaper photographs and the firsthand accounts he’d sought so hungrily were his old nightmares; the workings of a child trying to imagine what could have been so horrifying that it had forced his uncle into hiding. All he could do--all he’d ever been able to do--was imagine. Penny had actually been there. He felt his throat constrict slightly. “Tell me what that day was like, again. The protest.”
