Two by Two

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown hopes this group is better...]

God, the next morning was a slog.

Going in, Evie had been confident. She kind of knew Fitz, and she was a charming and likeable person. Yeah, he’d been through some shit, but all four of them had, how hard could it be to pull him out of his funk and talk him around?

How fucking hard indeed.

Her confidence had peaked the previous night. With two guns and four people, she was pretty sure none of them would try anything overnight, but also had the sense that indeed not having anything untoward happen when they were each at their most vulnerable would create a strong basis of trust. How wrong she’d been.

Because of course, given the situation, it was pretty hard to keep her eyes off of Fitz’s gun. What was she supposed to do? It was right there, being big and intimidating and rifle-y and *desirable*. It didn’t take Fitz long to notice her wandering eyes, either. What did he want from her? She wasn’t stupid, her hands weren’t going to wander.

There was a reprieve in the tension when the announcement declared their common enemy in Alex Avanesian dead. A macabre sort of relief came over Evie, before being replaced by an unexpected… was it anger? Jealousy? However it was to be described, it was troubling. Sure she’d fantasised about taking revenge, but she hadn’t genuinely thought she wanted it, that she was capable of it. It was just supposed to be an idle fantasy to keep her going as she recovered.

But now she’d never get the chance to find out if she would’ve done it. Well. At least he couldn’t hurt anyone else. The resident wildcat had gotten another life closer to the nine she was presumably going to have. The group shared their war stories for a short while, Evie explained the bandages around her midriff, an atmosphere of camaraderie reigned... but after the brief interlude of commiserating their common lost opportunity to get even, and sharing their stories of why they’d wanted to, things rapidly deteriorated back to normal. Fitz still hadn’t changed his mind. Evie still couldn’t keep her eyes to herself.

The tension finally broke with his demanding she 'fuck off with the longing gazes' at his gun. She snapped back asking what exactly he expected of her: they were locked in a deathmatch with one winner, he had a big fuck off gun, she didn't. Of course she was nervous and a little bit jealous. He returned fire with some snarky shit about preferring she didn't take his rifle out on a Tinder date.

“Fine!”

Evie couldn't hold the pent up emotion back any more. She'd spent her whole life modulating who she was, how she expressed herself, in hopes of not upsetting the people around her. So fucking long not saying what she wanted to say, not openly liking the things she was passionate about, not even having the courage to admit she was dating one of the hottest girls in school.

“Fine. I get it. You’d rather be alone and go stir crazy without any friends, then it’s not your fault when you snap and kill again. I'm not the maniac with a gun and two murders under her fucking belt already!”

Projecting? Projecting. Not that she was even fully aware of it. Evie was just pissed off, and letting damn near a week of tension come out in one go onto one mostly-undeserving target. What was he going to do, shoot her and prove her right?

“You win! You fucking win. I’ll fuck off and you can fuck your own gun in peace.”

Evie didn’t wait for Claire, wherever the hell she'd gotten to.

They had the radios anyway. She'd catch catch up.

[Evie McKown goes west, following the sunshine.]