Ivory Hill had spent the majority of her adult life running. Throughout her twenties and the first part of her thirties it was from bombs and bullets. Now, at thirty six years old Ivory was running from something that she could never truly escape fr...
Grace sat down opposite Ivory with a microwave burrito. "Ivy?"
"Yes?" Ivory looked up from her mug of coffee.
"Why do you bother with me?"
The younger woman looked at Grace in surprise. "Because I like you."
"Well you shouldn't, I'm not someone you should be around and I think what I told you last night proved that."
Ivory shook her head. "You were upset, there's nothing wrong with that."
Look, there are different ways to cope with being sad. Some people cry, some people drink, some people write shit poetry. I hurt people." Grace picked at her meal. "And I don't want to hurt you." She added in an undertone.
"Grace you need to stop blaming yourself for what happened at the school, you weren't to know that Sylwain and the other kids would get hurt."
"I should've done more."
"Grace you took a bullet for them, several if that scarring is anything to go by."
Grace hurriedly yanked down the hem of her blue T-shirt, hiding the lumpy landscape of scar tissue that covered her lower abdomen.
"You did your best to protect them Grace, there's nothing more that you could have done. I'll help you, Norm and Jake to get the Na'vi out of Hometree before it's too late. I'm not going to let innocent people suffer and I'm not going to stand by whilst Quaritch and his set of idiots try and take what doesn't belong to them in the first place."
"Ivy I know you're trying but you're just never going to be able to understand. Until you've seen someone die in front of you and had it be your fault you're just not going to be able to realise that no matter what you say I'm always going to blame myself."
Ivory thought about telling her for a second. She thought about telling her about the war, the one that she wished she could run away from, the war that had sent her to Pandora in the first place. "Whatever you say Grace." She said instead. The woman pushed her plate away and pushed her half of the bench back, leaving the room and disappearing down the hall to her sleeping quarters.
Ivory knocked on the door.
"Can you come back in a minute?" Norm yelled, his voice muffled.
"Sure." The dark haired woman turned away, trailing down the corridor to the back door. She pulled one of the exopacks from the hooks on the wall and slipped it on, shoving the door open and stepping outside. Ivory knew that she was supposed to tell someone if she was leaving the shack and she knew that she definitely wasn't supposed to do it alone given the enormous amount of wildlife on the Hallelujah mountains but at that point she didn't care. She needed to get away, even if it was just for a few hours.
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"Where the hell were you?" Grace demanded when Ivory appeared in the corridor four hours later, hanging her exopack back up.
"I went for a walk."
"We were looking for you for hours you absolute fucking idiot, we thought you'd been killed by one of the viper wolves!"
"I just needed to-"
Grace didn't bother to listen to Ivory's excuses. "I was scared shitless Ivy, don't you fucking dare make me think you're dead again." She snarled then turned away, stalking off to her room.
Ivory was left in the corridor gazing after Grace with a slightly mystified expression on her face.
