Work Text:
As the sun rose behind her, Sara Myers-Cohen-Yao dragged her feet.
“Hurry up! We’ve got lots to do before school starts, and you promised you’d help.”
“Do you get up this early every morning, Molly?”
“Every morning.”
“I’m not going to pick farming as my job,” Sara huffed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Well, you might not get to choose. Here, get the door, would you? My hands are full.”
Sara eased open the door of the chicken coop, her nose wrinkling at the smell of their waste.
“Morning chooks!” Molly called softly, shaking her bucket. “Morning, Harriet, morning Ethel, hello there Shelley…”
“How can you tell the difference?”
“I spend way too much time with them. Go and get the eggs for me while I feed them, please.”
Sara stepped forward gingerly, her prized blue wellies a bit too big despite two pairs of socks. The last thing she wanted to do was lose one.
“Galileo, where are you, love?”
“Galileo!” Sara added, looking around for the elderly hen who would usually be pecking her ankles with targeted venom. But there was nothing. “Gally?”
She reached in for the eggs, and her hand met feathers. Oh.
She shrieked.
Carena felt alive. Every nerve and sinew was on fire as the boy from Fort Canton chased her up and over the crest of the hill. She was ducking and diving and dodging the foam rounds he blasted at her. One, two, three - there. The grouse hole she knew was a step behind her. She jumped back, and vanished.
He was confused by that for a second too long, his round freckled face crumpling as he scanned the horizon. He turned away, and she popped up and shot him between the shoulder blades with a plasticky thwapp.
“Canton Thirty-Seven, you’re out! The game is Abel’s!”
The cheering was raucous enough to draw a horde, and Carena partook in it, her fellow Runners jogging over to pat her on the back, to offer a shake of the hand and a “no hard feelings” to the Fort Canton side. Training exercises like these were about fostering healthy, friendly and productive competition, or so Janine said. Amelia just found them entertaining to watch. If anything, they were a way of actually using the huge cache of water pistols and nerf guns someone had dragged back to Abel Township years before.
“That was a dirty move, Abel,” the freckled boy grumbled in a Geordie accent, only half joking as they searched the field to gather up the bullets.
“You just haven’t got any cunning, Canton. Everythin’ has to be big and flashy with you lot. That’s why we’re beatin’ you seven to four.”
“I’ll get you in the next one. I nearly had you in that last 500 metres, I just ran low on ammo is all.”
“You’re faster than me,” Carena said, almost approving.
“I’m faster than anyone. Runner Thirty-Seven, Joe Garron.” He got to his feet and held out a clammy hand to pull her up, and she ignored it, not trusting him not to drop her in the mud in revenge.
“Runner Ten, Caz. Just Caz. And I better be gettin’ back to mine.”
“Till next time, then.”
“Yeah, I s’pose,” she replied, hoping next time meant never. The smarmy git! I’m faster than anyone , huh? She’d see about that.
“I don’t know how they manage to be cocky even when they lose!” She moaned to Jody as she caught up with the Abel group. The Head of Runners just laughed.
“Canton people never change. Come on, let’s get back for breakfast. We deserve a banquet after that win, but we’ll probably just get porridge.”
They jogged gently back from the castle, slowing every now and again to stretch out muscles and chatter away about all the latest gossip. Carena kept her headset tuned to the operator’s desk, usually, but the conversations about who in the township had their eye on who quickly began to bore her, and she switched radio frequencies to try and find someone playing upbeat music. So she missed some context when, flicking back to standard, she heard a child in hysterics.
“And then, and then, and then-!” Sara’s voice broke into huge gulping breaths that made Carena’s heart sink to her stomach.
“It’s okay, sweetheart, you can tell your Dad, yeah? Just breathe for me. It’s going to be all right.”
“Molly won’t move or do anything and she, she won’t stop crying and I don’t know what to dooo!”
“Sam? Sam, it’s Caz, what the fuck’s going on?”
“Ah, Carena, you are live on Channel Four, please do not swear over your headset-“
About twenty years and an apocalypse too young for that reference, Carena missed the levity in his tone. “What’s happened? I’m coming back right now. Tell Molly to just hang on, I’ll be there.”
“Carena, it’s nothing, don’t- Runner Ten what are you doing?! ”
She tore ahead of the group into another sprint. This time, she really did feel it, her body not ready to be pushed again so soon. Blood rushed to her ears, her chest and calves tightened. Somewhere in the distance, Jody and Sam both started shouting at her, but her mind was set. She had to get back to the gates, now.
“You’re crying because a bastard chicken died? You ate chicken hotpot for dinner last night!”
She hadn’t needed her inhaler in nearly a year, but now she took a grateful shaky puff of it, trying to stop her head from swimming, hoping to stave off a full on asthma attack.
“Sara, this is why you need to stay out of the comms shack when I’m working. You see how my Runners end up getting confused?”
“But it wasn’t just any old chicken , it was Galileo .”
Sam closed his eyes in despair. “These are my genes, aren’t they.”
“That wail of anguish she does does sound a bit like yours, Sam,” Jody agreed, and turned to where Carena had flopped down into a chair to get her breath back. “You’re not off the hook either though, Ten. What on Earth were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. I was just… sorry for tearin’ off like that. Won’t happen again, I swear.”
Her voice softened. Some felt that Jody wasn’t really strict enough for Head Runner, but there was nobody else as experienced or well-regarded who would take a job so heavy. “Not everything is a worst-case-scenario, you know? You need to learn to take a moment to assess situations before you go plowing into trouble.”
“I was getting flashbacks to one of your ‘espiditions’,” Sam grinned. Carena scowled at the teasing.
“Where’s Molly?”
“Still in the cooooop,” Sara whined. Carena grabbed her arm a tad roughly and marched out of the shack.
“Stop that noise. Let’s go and bury this bird.”
Molly was sitting outside the henhouse, a little pale but otherwise quite still, the morning sunlight bleaching her hair. Sara bundled into her chest in a big hug. Carena tried to give her a gentle smile, but it was not an expression her face did well at the best of times.
“Hangin’ in there?”
“Yep. I’ll be fine. It’s fine, really, Caz, I’m just a bit-“
A tear rolled down her cheek and into Sara’s hair. Carena pulled the spare shirt she’d been wearing on their way out that morning from around her waist, and headed in, wrapping the body of the elderly menace inside it. The chicken had a mean look in its eye even now.
“Goodbye, you stinkin’ bastard. That’s the last time you’ll peck anyone, and I don’t even get to eat you.”
They walked in near silence to a space of land a bit beyond the vegetable patch and the compost heap, Carena stopping for a shovel at the toolshed. Her stomach growled and her lungs still weren’t filling with quite enough air, as if she’d tripped a catch in them, a faint alarm warning in the back of her head to please sit down and try to breathe before it gets out of hand . She wanted to be stubborn and ignore it, but four months as a Runner had already taught her that that was foolish. Trying to run on an injury just kept people off longer. Trying to push through her asthma with sheer force of will was similarly stupid.
“Mol, I’ve got to… I’ve got to rest, for a bit.”
She slumped down into the grass, counting breaths. Her fingertips were blue.
“You going to be okay?” Molly asked, her own fingers brushing against them as she took the bundle.
“Yeah, just overdid it. I’ll be fine. I can eulogise from here, like.”
She leaned back on her hands, the tallest flowers tickling her cheek, and began.
“We’re uh, gathered here today to celebrate the life of a chicken.”
“The best chicken,” Sara corrected, squeezing Molly’s hand.
“The best chicken.” Carena modified. She’d been to enough funerals and memorials in sixteen years to last a lifetime, so she knew the drill. Saying a nice goodbye was important, and if you bumped up someone’s qualities a little, well, there was no harm in that. She cleared her throat.
“Galileo Figaro, you was a… complicated bird. You liked almost nobody and almost nobody liked you. It took a really kind girl to brave that henhouse every morning, but I’m glad she did.” God, she was starving with all this thinking about chicken.
“I never seriously meant it when I talked about turnin’ you into pie,” she lied. “You got anythin’ to say, Molly?”
“Yeah. You were a good hen, and a great friend. I already miss the way you would run towards me when I called your name and how you’d follow me around the town like a dog. I’m going to miss the angry squawk you made outside the schoolroom window when you got out of the pen and wanted me to come and get you. Thanks for all the maths lessons I got to skive.”
“Thanks also for that one time durin’ the Occupation when you flew right at a soldier’s face and he fell on his arse in chicken shit. It was golden.” Carena wheezed as she chuckled on the last few words, and took another puff of medicine.
“You were always brilliant at scaring our enemies away.” Molly giggled despite her tears. “Rest in peace, Galileo.”
“Amen, farewell, auf Wiedersehen sweetheart,” Sara finished off solemnly.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school? Your mama wanted you back to get washed up before it started, didn’t she?”
“Yikes!” Sara rubbed her streaming eyes with her jumper sleeve, turned, and ran home as fast as a seven-year-old in wellies could. “Bye!”
Molly laid the bundle down, and took up the shovel. “Are you sure you’re all right? I’ve never seen you wheezing this bad.”
“It’s fine,” Carena said. “We won the match.”
“That’s great! Meet anyone cool?”
“Huh?”
“From Fort Canton.” At Carena’s bewildered silence, she sighed. “I spend my life at school or with chickens and goats and farmers, Caz, and I like that, but I get sick of seeing the same faces all day. And please distract me before I start crying again because I really don’t want Dad to see me in a state at breakfast. He gets all fatherly and worried and the next thing you know he’s never giving me a moment’s peace.”
Carena felt a twinge of jealousy at that, but let it pass.
“There was this cocky prick who I shot in the back. Nobody worth mentionin’.” She sat up, watching her friend dig. “I can’t believe that chicken hung on for over ten years. That’s got to be some kind of record.”
“What part of distract me …”
“Want to talk about school instead?”
Molly groaned. “ God, no. I was wondering, though: does your sister Jade know how to shut up?”
“She’s had a voice like a foghorn as long as I’ve known her. Most of us Skeet kids is loud. There was nineteen of us at one point, we had to get attention somehow.”
“It’d be fine if she had literally anything to say. She just wants to pick arguments in every lesson and undermine the teachers. She’s the same age as you, so she doesn’t even have to be there, I don’t know why she doesn’t leave if she hates it so much.” Carena stretched her legs as Molly began to warm to her theme; she noticed some new bruises from the morning’s game.
“...and the homework is getting ridiculous! I still haven’t done the essay question on pre-zom history, and we just got given another huge government pamphlet to read on the science behind the vaccine. Why does it matter whether we understand it? It works! I’m happy enough with that!”
“I do not miss school,” Carena said with sympathy, and looking at the grave: “I think that’s probably deep enough.”
“Okay.” Molly waited for a few moments, and then chuckled. “I don’t think I can do it. I know it’s stupid-“
“It’s not stupid. She was your pet.”
“I just don’t remember a time when she wasn’t hanging around my ankles. Even when me and Dad left for a few years and came back, and everything had changed and the people had been through so much… she was there. Just the same. Only letting Five near her, and everyone else just tossed the food in and ran. She recognised me right away, even though I’d grown ten inches. Nobody else did.”
“New people, same old Galileo,” Carena said. She laid the body to rest, and Molly covered it over. They sat quietly for a few moments, the dark haired girl feeling triumphant. She’d managed not to cough, and that was the real win.
“Come on, let’s get some breakfast before there’s nothing left. Runner Twenty-four has a bottomless stomach.”
“You haven’t eaten yet, Caz? You just did two hours of training!”
“Well, I was… I wasn’t hungry.”
They jostled each other as they walked back to the square, laughing and chattering, voices fading away. The sun was high in the sky now. A new day of wins and losses.
“You’re a horrible liar, Carena Skeet. I just heard your tummy rumble!”
“How come you’re always announcin’ my name, Molly Harrison?”
“Well, I think it sounds… imperious. You should use it more. You are Princess Carena after all.”
“Do not start on that, it’s bad enough when Sara does it and I only let her ‘cause she’s a baby… stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“You’re makin’ a face like you’re going to say it…”
“...what face…!”
“ ...that face…!”