@delinquentatom
There wasn’t a lot Fox hated. Not genuinely. But she hated this mountain. The few good memories she had of being here- the pretty art, the good food- was tainted by the memories of the fear and the pain and the horror of her last days here. Just walking the halls gave her back that rush of trying to escape the scientists and the guards. Sleeping in those same bunk beds made her hands shake, remembering the anticipation of waiting to fight them next, waiting to see who would be taken next. She felt like she could look down and would still see those hand shaped bruises the guards left on her arms and wrists, and even though they were long gone, she’d still taken to absently rubbing her wrists when she was idle. In addition her sleeping patterns had gotten worse; she was barely sleeping on her good nights; not sleeping at all on her bad. Raven was still hurt, half of their remaining people were still at Arkadia and under the rule of the adults, and Jasper hadn’t been there in days and she was worried something had happened to him.
Paired with the images of operating tables, cages, and the phantom screams of pain that decorated her dreams, she was hard up for some sleep. But she preferred to spend her supposed sleeping hours in the dining hall, one of the few places that wasn’t completely tainted for her. She remembered the bodies, remembered the violent look of the deaths they’d suffered, but in a way that comforted her, reminded her that the people that hurt her people weren’t here to hurt them anymore. She doubted the room was as comforting for anyone else, and she was usually alone late at night as she wandered around the room, touching paintings that she didn’t know the artists of, running her fingers along what was left of their lives here.
She heard a sound and spun around, fear kicking in on instinct as she backed up a few unconscious paces, but her body relaxed at the familiar figure in the door, and she smiled. “I thought almost everyone was asleep.” She offered as an apology.