Ground Down

Chapter 11

She was mad at Abby. Not even really because she had stuck her into a room with Anya again, but more because she had, when Raven had yelled at her about having seen the bullet wound scar on her own back, repeated that it must have been a piece of shrapnel. Anya had called her something Raven had not understood but agreed with either way, and Doctor Griffin had removed herself. She was mad at her about that, about being a fucking hypocrite who told her she was having a room rebuilt for her but lied about her damn injuries. Mostly, she was mad because doctors lied to people when they thought they were weak. 

Her roommate's bed groaned, a sharp clack announced she had tossed another piece of it onto the floor. She had been dismantling it for over an hour and accumulated a pile of broken bits that made Raven worry the bed was going to give in soon, but she hadn't said anything. If Abby had told her that her last scan had shown she would need a brace to sit upright in a wheelchair, she'd be mad as hell, too. Maybe she would've lashed out against Abby, too, maybe that was why she had told her to just leave when the doctor had reached for her radio to call for assistance. They would've tied her up again, but she didn't worry as much anymore. 

Anya hadn't lashed out at her. She hadn't as much as looked in her direction since Abby had left even though Raven assumed she had seen the half dozen wary glances she'd cast her way since. Another piece clanked to the floor, metal that time. She kneaded her blanket. She didn't overly prefer her roommate so quiet, it was more unsettling than being shouted at in a language she didn't speak, although she was sure starting to pick up its dirty words, it felt the same kind of unsettling like seeing a gun with a silencer pointed at one's face. Not that silencers actually silenced gunshots, but in the movie kinda way. 

Raven cast another glance at her roommate. She was scowling, reaching behind her head to yank on the bedframe, tossed plastic onto the floor. Blood clung to the hole that had sprung into existence. The deadpan slant to her brows had sharpened into a tense line that did something to her face she found it hard to look at. 

"I was going to be an astronaut," Raven blurted out, swallowing because Anya's hand stilled on the plastic edge. "I skipped high-school and started at WIASO, I was going to be the youngest astronaut since the war and go up to the satellite and see if I can work it to capture images. That would've been a great-" she exhaled the breath hot in her throat- "a great step forwards, right? With some time, we might've been able to see rebel troops move outside the Coalition's borders and make out where they keep their weapons and maybe even get a guess on how many. What kind. Fuck-" she swiped at her face, put up a smile, dragged both hands down her cheeks as if to exchange the skin for another- "I don't need legs in space, I can still go, it's all zero-G. I just need to get up there."

Her roommate twisted a piece of bedframe between her bloodied fingertips, regarded it in her wholly impassive way, then tossed it and turned to meet her gaze. The hard lines of her face formed a shape like a marble statue, somehow human yet void of actual life to it. 

"I fought them. The Splita. Fought them for years. I was ten when I first travelled into the borderlands, fourteen when I took my first second. She was heading a troop by the time she was twelve." She lifted one shoulder into a loose shrug. "Now I am-" she motioned down her body with one disgusted hand- "branwoda [ ? ] ."

"What's that mean?" Raven pushed herself up. "Branwoda?"

"Useless."

Something in her stomach lurched towards her knees, which in her position meant sideways more than downwards, kind of like when they hit go on flight simulation and zero-G devoured up and down and left and right and the body's atoms cried for help for thirty seconds before they got their act back together. She should be saying something encouraging, but, truth be told, she felt pretty useless, too. Anya tossed another piece of bed, onto the plate of food she hadn't touched that time.