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[prodigaljaybird]

It's strange to be outside again after so long spent indoors; first the endless dark of Rapture, and then the shuttered quiet of his own bedroom. He's seen the sunlight in bits and snatches, trickles through the slatted walls of the hut and shining through the door, but no more than that.

It feels good. Warm on his face when Jason tips it skyward, comforting. It feels good to know that in spite of the whole world ending, the sun and sky, the trees, the island is still here.

And going on as normal, if the sounds that greet Jason as he shuffles down the boardwalk are any indication. That feels good, too, and Jason feels better for every step he takes. In many ways, he feels like he's been ill, like it was a fever that's kept him indoors and not his own insurmountable dread. He feels raw and worn out, too hollow, but under the sun again...Bucky was right. He feels better.

He has no aim for where he's walking. There are faces he wants to see, but even now, he's afraid to seek them out. What will they say to him, what have they heard, or worse, what if they didn't care to notice he was gone?

The familiar hurt turns in Jason's stomach, and he takes the path not to the Compound, but down to Robin's Gym. Outside of class, the place is like a graveyard, but the wooden structures are familiar and sunlit. As ever when he's here alone, Jason thinks of Tim, and he smiles a little. "Way to miss the fireworks, little brother."

[ooc: wide open to familiar faces~ find him at Robin's Gym or on the way there]

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[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

Hatred is a familiar feeling. Indeed, it's a feeling, which is already a marked difference from the apathetic numbness of earlier. Katniss remembers her time in District 13 vividly now. She remembers how her hatred for President Snow, her insistence that she be the one to put a bullet in his brain kept her going. Kept her alive, and while perhaps not strong, functional at the very least. Hatred had been the one thing she'd had while Peeta was in the Capitol and even now she looks back on it as one of the only things she's ever had.

If Katniss could pick only one emotion to describe herself with, it would be hate. Because there isn't much more that she sees. But his hands cup her face, and eventually the calming gesture works. The shaking stops, but the fire in her voice doesn't go away.

"What if he hurts you again? I'm not going to lose anyone else."

Essentially, what she's saying is, I'd kill him for you, if I had to.

[prodigaljaybird]

"I don't think he will," says Jason again, and won't fault her if she doesn't believe it this time, either. The world he came from, the world she grew up in, they're different from this place, but they just keep bleeding in. Fear, uncertainty, rage, they don't leave a person as easily as walking through a door into a tropical island. She can't let go of her dread anymore they he can; Jason's just better at hiding it.

"He doesn't want me to kill bad people, but there aren't any here," he says, passing his fingers through her hair. "None to stop. He won't see me as a threat until there are."