burnwithus | (sawyer) a modern day warrior, mean mean stride

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sawyer

(sawyer) a modern day warrior, mean mean stride

Back home, all of the Victors had ways to deal with the things they saw, both in the arena and outside of it. Haymitch drank, Peeta baked, the Morphlings lost themselves and I...

I tie knots.

What I used to do was hunt, but without any arrows and no way to make more until I learn how, the prospect's pointless. So instead, I wear my fingers down on a length of rope, my hands automatically fashioning the knots that Finnick taught me and a few of my own devising. Most are just beautiful to look at, but many are functional as well, until I finally tie one that would be familiar to anyone : a noose.

The familiar strains of 'The Hanging Tree' begin to float through my memory. It's appropriate, because I'm sitting on a tree branch - and once I'm sure there's no one around I sing a few lines to myself.

❝Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
if we met up tonight beneath the hanging tree.❞

My voice is scratchy at first, but I know the song well - and my father had one that could silence every mockingjay within ear's distance.

I hear a rustle of movement - it's slight, but it's definitely there. "If you tell anyone you heard that I'll have to kill you."

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So I'm being asked to keep a secret. And my life's being threatened. Great. None of that's very new, not even novel enough for me to really bat an eye as I continue walking toward the sound of a voice familiar to me after Halloween night those few weeks ago. It's deeply familiar now. I know that I've only known it for months, but it feels like it's been years, mired now in a bunch of confused, resurfaced memories of my childhood. Like she's wedged herself in there, a stubborn stain that won't come out, even if I think sometimes that she probably would want out of my head. Probably doesn't want to have connections at all.

She seems like that type.

"Relax, Catnip," I say as I see her now while I round a tree. "I ain't got no one to tell who'd even care about the fact that some random girl on the island sings. I'm pretty sure most random girls on the island sing."

As I draw closer, I notice what's in her hands, my expression immediately turning dark. Because, really.

What the hell?

"Sonuvabitch," I mutter as I hurry on over, half a mind to tug the rope away from her altogether. "The hell're you tyin' a noose for?"

"To hang myself with it. What else?" I reply, rolling my eyes. It's a defensive reaction because I don't want to deal with him right now. Not with someone who inadvertently saw so much of the information I try to keep hidden. And especially now that I know what's happened to him.

It makes me feel sympathy for the scared child huddled under the bed. It makes me want to care. That's dangerous.

But he's making a fuss, so I tug twice on the rope and it releases the noose. "Are you happy? There are easier ways to die."

You know, as much as I try to shrug the comment off, there are barbs in her words that cut straight through. It's not really funny, I think to myself, even if her sarcastic tone relieves me real quick. Yeah, I was worried that she'd hang herself. Maybe equally as much, I was afraid that she'd do it in front of me. I've had enough people killing themselves in front of me, one way or another, and that's what compels me to walk on over and snag the rope casually from her hands just in case. Worse than anything else is the idea of not trying to help at all if someone's thinking about hurting oneself.

It's a depressing train of thought, so I try to push that away real quick.

"I know," I tell her pointedly, as I start looping the rope around and throw it over my shoulder, considering its thickness and wondering how it might come in handy later on. I've had an itching to hunt some boar. "You've got a knife on you?"

My hands close over air a second too late. "Give that back." If I sound a little bit more petulant than normal, a little bit more desperate...well, it matters less now. The rope is a stupid thing and I can easily get another, but it's the fact that he's meddling in my life at all that makes me angry.

I always have a knife on me, to make up for the lack of a bow. The first night I fell asleep with it underneath my pillow was was a sharp comparison between myself and Haymitch. At least I'm not a drunk, but who knows?

The knife's handle is wrapped in leather, attached to my belt. I throw it at a tree opposite and watch it embed into the wood - sinking straight into the center of the knot on its surface. "Now give me the rope."

As the knife sinks into the wood, I'm sharply reminded of Locke. Which is silly, really. This girl isn't anything like Locke, because no matter how much shit Locke pulled, no matter how dangerous the guy sometimes seemed, he was always soft at the core. He was all about belief, about faith, and that's something I can't imagine that Katniss has a lot of. But I still think of Locke as I stare at the knife on over there, as I hear her petulant tone, like she resents the fact that I'm telling her what to do. Or what not to do. Or what I won't let her do, which probably adds the most insult to injury.

So I toss the rope back on over, because yeah, having the knife is enough of a reason to give her something back, at least. And I head on over to the tree, staring at the angle of the knife carefully before I yank it right out and wave for her to follow, peering deeper into the forest.

"C'mon. There's been a boar still wufflin' around my hut now that it's all cold out, more'n they're used to. We're better off eatin' the thing before it dies of frostbite," I say, actually hoping she'll come.

Everyone on this island is hiding something. Some hide it better than others - and for some, it begins to show in the cracks on the surface of their faces. They smile beautifully and cover it up with parties and idle conversation. He's not much different, but he hides it in bravado.

And now he has my knife. I should have known better.

"Did you shoot him?"

Huh. So the girl's assuming that I've got a gun. All things considered, of the many redneck traits that people generally attach to my person, gun-wielding is probably one of the most helpful on a practical level. While I can't exactly say that what I have for this girl is trust, I do believe that she's not going to go all Samara on me without some real good reason, so I just wave for her to follow and trek through the cold (yes, the cold, stupid snow and stupid winter) toward the general direction of my hut.

"Ain't got a gun," I tell her honestly, although I flip her knife around in my hand a couple of times just to show that even without a gun, it isn't exactly like I'm hopeless. "So I haven't shot 'im. Haven't harmed a hair on that hairy pig's behind. Which is why we're huntin' now, see, 'cause maybe I just can't do it on my own."

"Not the pig. The man." I haven't forgotten him, or that moment in the parking lot. It was one of the first times that I've seen Sawyer look anything less than composed. And we all had our share of the dead coming back to haunt us on Halloween. I slip down from the tree, landing on my feet as silently as possible just through pure habit.

I don't know why I follow him. This is stupid - one knife is hardly enough to hunt down a boar given the size of them on this island. And I bet he walks loudly too. Even if boars are stupid, they aren't that stupid.

Or maybe I'm just unused to hunting with anyone but Gale.

I freeze up. Not for long, mind, but I'm pretty sure it's long enough. For someone who's a hunter, a fighter, you've gotta look out for the flashes when your opponent (be it just opposition in a conversation, or something more serious) lets down his or her guard, and I know I've just pulled the equivalent of being completely pantsed in front of a large group. Because I really did think that she meant the pig, or something else inconsequential. Thought that she'd ignore the nightmare like everyone else I've shared one with, but no, she just has to go and be that much more special.

"Yeah," I say, even as I thread through the forest, my feet brushing against grass, hands itching and wishing that I had some kind of gun in my hands, even if I'd never use it for anything other than hunting, these days.

"I shot him. Now you know I'm a killer. What of it?"

I shrug as my eyes scan the ground for signs of nearby game out of habit. "Everyone has something to hide." I refrain from adding something along the lines of now we have something in common, but I feel it anyways. There are people on the island whose lives have been innocent and I envy them for it, but they don't understand.

He's hardly one to be trusted, but then again, neither am I.

There are other tracks around the area we're in, but they're older, already partially covered or disturbed. Since there's nothing to see, I walk past clumps of bushes but keep my distance from him. "Why did you shoot him?"

Everyone has something to hide. That's putting it far too generally. Sure, there ain't a fool I've met yet stupid enough to give away every single detail of his or her life, but there's a difference between that and the sorts of things that we're keeping under wraps. These are human lives we're talking about, after all, and with the way I look at her for her comment, I'm pretty sure she can get the hint. I'm not about to downplay anything that's happened in my life, not if that means shirking some of the blame.

"I shot 'im 'cause I thought he was the person who killed my parents," I grit out, hating that I can't lie to her, not with all that she's seen. "But he wasn't. He wasn't Sawyer."

I've shot people for less. That's the first thing that comes to mind, but it doesn't make it any better. Still, it helps me understand who he was, and how he connects with the scared child underneath the bed. He couldn't have been more than twelve years old at the time, probably younger.

Why is it that children are always the ones who suffer? I'm not talking about myself - I've never really been a child or thought of myself as one. But there's Rue, and there's Prim, and the girl in the Capitol with the pale yellow coat in the snow.

"Alright," I nod, accepting it - at least for now.

The conversation could stop there. I know that, I see this sort of acceptance in her eyes, or maybe it's some kind of resignation. But the only way to bring this full circle, and the only way I've ever been able to make peace with this whole of my past, is in the words I'm about to say to her. I take a deep breath first, and I don't dare treat this with any of my usual levity.

"I found the real guy, the guy who killed my parents, on an island kinda like this one, that had a whole Lotta crap I couldn't understand. I just wanted to hear a damn apology, like killin' the first guy meant I had to give back to the world somehow. But he just laughed. I dunno if I'm a good person or not, though I'm guessin' no in the grand scheme of things. But I ain't sorry."

"An apology?" I can't keep the skepticism out of my voice. An apology from the man who killed his parents. I would laugh if I wasn't dead sure that he was serious. He was young, then, which means that he was probably taken by other relatives or...put in the orphanage, if his world was anything like mine.

"If you wanted an apology, then you're a better person than I am," though it's not much competition. The island doesn't let me forget that I came here seconds after shooting Coin from the balcony.

And I still don't regret it.

"An apology," I repeat with a nod, although the taut sensation in my jaw reminds me of the fact that it isn't nearly as nice of me to say so as it sounds, that I sure as heck ain't someone who lets getting slighted by with a single five letter word. So I elaborate. "But it ain't 'cause I think sayin' sorry means a damn thing; it doesn't fix anything. It's just..."

I breathe, slowly, in and out, just to keep the thudding in my chest from overcoming me altogether. "I ain't any better, Catnip. You saw what happened in that nightmare of ours. I've become the same damned person as the man I'd been meanin' to kill all my life. All I wanted as a damn apology because maybe then he'd know that it was a mistake, what he did."

After I pause, I add, "He just laughed, though."

"Did you shoot him afterwards, too?" Somehow, ridiculously, I hope the answer is no, even if I've come to expect nothing else from people. Even if it wouldn't be my answer. If I could fully name a culprit that killed someone in my family, there wouldn't be a limit on what revenge I would take.

I shot Coin on the basis of my suspicions and President Snow's words, after all.

He wanted an apology after he shot the first man, wrongly. He says he became the person that he hated. And he admits all of this to me. No, I can't pretend to understand this man.

Yeah, I'm not expecting that question. I mean, it's a natural question to ask, and it makes me wonder how I'm taken so aback by it. Maybe it's 'cause people, they don't generally ask things like that without some sorta warning. Hell, a lot of people never ask at all, prefer to sweep everything unpleasant about the world under the rug like it was never there. I guess that's something I can easily appreciate about Katniss. Life would be easier if more people just bucked up and put it all out there like she does. Too bad, my life doesn't let me get even a taste of easy.

"No," I reply first, plain and simple. I've long since come to terms with what I did to Anthony Cooper, after all, if not the man before him. "No, I didn't shoot him afterward. 'Cause I didn't have a gun."

Hopefully the tone of my voice makes it clear enough what I mean. I doubt I'd enjoy telling her that I strangled the man to death.

He killed him anyways. I don't pretend to understand people the way that Gale does, but that much I can figure out. Without a gun, it was probably messy. Probably with his bare hands. That's why he isn't telling me.

I honestly don't know what to think of it. Of course, I'm hardly one to judge, but I've almost always had my bow, and I can't even imagine what it's like to not have the same level of detachment.

"So after you killed him was when you started wanting to do the right thing?" they're his words, not mine. His reason for helping me that day. Even more confusing now that I know he's a killer.

I don't know what she's thinking right now. Probably nothing damning. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that it's hard for killers to fully condemn other killers. Even now that Sawyer's made me one of his number, I just... wonder. How much of it was an act. None of it seemed like it, of course, but then again, this is a man who made a living out of being someone else, right? Either way, though. Either way, he damn needed to take me seriously and he didn't, he needed to apologize and he only laughed, so I can't regret. Not too much.

"No," I shake my head. "No, I started wantin' to do the right thing years before that, but wantin' and bein' strong enough to, those are two different things."

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(sawyer) a modern day warrior, mean mean stride

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