By the way, I killed your sister. [Kara]

Seph wasn't sure why she had left the Uprising. Well... no. She knew why she had left, but thinking back, it almost seemed immature. After visiting the districts for some quiet time and peace of mind (and to possibly gather some more explosive materials), she found instead the remnants of hunger games gossip. At first, it was all about some Arbor kid, and how he was blind, D12. She was confident she knew everything there was to know about Arbor Halt by the time "Ailia" was even mentioned.

But the real icing on the cake was watching it all herself, her sister being called to the stage by an ecstatic Capitolite with flaming red hair. Correcting the mispronunciation of her name. "It's Ail-ya," she had said.

Seph returned back to the Uprising after that, stalking through the forest and picking at her pack of dried fruit. Long before she stepped into the camp, she had decided not to stay. Her head was thick, like it was packed with mud, and she couldn't close her eyes without the image of her sister plastering itself across the inside of her eyelids. Even after the all that time, she had never forgotten Ailia's face (that's what happens when you're an identical twin). Thin and pale, framed by golden locks. Qispy eyebrows always knitted into a frown. But the picture started warping, warping into something new... something more gruesome.

Ailia's head lulling to the side, eyes wide open. She's not looking at anything. Blank and unmoving. Her face is totally relaxed, but the corners of her mouth almost make it as if she is smiling. The tell-tale signs of death. Seph could almost smell the vague scent of her rotting flesh. And for this reason, she wasn't able to sleep at night, to pressure her subconscious to let her retire when night fell. She grew tired, run-down, jagged with a temper, as she journeyed on to the Uprising Headquarters.

Her dead sister developed a sense of humor in response to Seph's lack of sleep on the trip; sometimes Ailia was blue from drowning, sometimes she was covered with tracker jacker stings oozing with pus. Sometimes there was a thick, blistering purple bruise ringing around the center of her neck, as if someone had pressed down on her windpipe and closed off her breathing passages.

She was growing crazy, her last bit of sanity had cautioned. Or maybe she really was cursed by the ghost of her twin. Either way, she knew as she finally caught site of her destination, that she had to leave, to find a place where she could try to deal with her problems. It was dangerous to work with bombs when one was not in a good state of mind... she could just blow up the whole place in a split-second, and all of their lives would've been lost.

So she sneaked into camp one early morning and gathered her things, the remainder of her gunpowder, her bottles and tin foil. A few clothes and a few more bags of dried fruit and nuts. She could hunt on her own, but the extra nourishment would come in handy, as would the weaponry if she ever crossed another forest bum's path; sometimes those people got vicious, especially if they wanted whatever you were carrying. She had dealt with a few in the past, the most recent one being someone who had attempted to breach the perimeter of the camp. Seph hadn't been able to get a good look at the offender, but she would've bet all her money that the person was hungry and probably rabid with disease... the forest was a cruel place to those who did not know how to navigate it. That's why she had banded with the Uprising at first. She didn't have a profound hatred for the Capitol, in fact her father had been rather close with Panem's government if she could recall. No... It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, if she really wanted to survive out in the wild. The Uprising provided shelter, food, water, and supplies when she needed them, and in return she had developed bombs for its protection. (And to attack the Capitol, she supposed, since that was what the other members seemed to fancy)

Then she was off, running to no place in particular, no direction. The first few kilometers felt like heaven; the wind whistling through her hair, the tug of the pack on her shoulder, the fact that no one else would be able to see her go insane... that's what she had really feared, others looking down on her for calling for her sister at night, bursting into tears at random moments, quivering at the thought Ailia's last few moments on earth. Now that she was alone, she could deteriorate by herself, although she hoped to an extent that it would all just go away in time. All she needed was time, and she ran and ran until she could run now more.

The next few days of traveling felt like hell. Ailia still popped up in her thoughts at all the wrong times, and she still couldn't sleep. Finally, the weight of what she had done struck her, and she quickly set to work to find a goal to work towards, a place to actually go. That's when she decided on heading towards District Four... their location by the water, she hoped, would calm her. She had once read that in a book, that the ocean was soothing to those of unstable health, although at the time, the words had flown over her head, for she could not comprehend that a very large body of water like that could possibly exist.

The water did calm her slightly, and if it wasn't the water, it was the time. Soon, the image started fading again, just like it had when she had first left her sister and her family. Cooking, perfect her techniques in bomb making, and tending to the small shack she had found a little ways off from the fence that so generously separated District Four from the outside world, kept her busy as a whole, and soon she felt a lot better. A lot... cleaner. Healthier, as if she had gathered diseases just like all the other loners while living by herself, but now she was happier, cured, and finally thoughts of guilt swept over her like the waves of water she was near. She hadn't even informed the Uprising of her plans to leave, to get away for a while... left them fairly unprotected and in-the-gray, wondering if she had run off to tell the Capitol of their plans, or to another enemy guild, and she was finally feeling the repercussions.

So today she packed up. Swept the shack one last time and removed any traces that someone had been living there for the past year; threw the firewood into the forest, buried the carcass of an animal a few yards away. Brushed over where her small acid bombs left craters in the sand, and she was off again, on the journey back.

It was the same as any other long trek she had taken, although this time instead of haunted by her sister's passing, she was plagued with uncertainty and doubt as to what she might do, what she might say to these people she hadn't seen for so long. "Sorry about that... may I have my job back?" "I was just hunting some game and I got lost in the forest! I haven't been gone long, have I?"

Finally, Seph reached the clearing. It was morning, just like it had been all that time ago when she had decided to leave... the breeze blew, and she dropped to the ground, placing her bag beside her. Hopefully no one would notice her arrival yet, and she would have time to think about her er... introduction. Glancing up at the birds pinwheeling in the sky, the sun shining shyly over the horizon, her eyes slid closed. She would start with an apology, she decided, then perhaps an offering of some kind... but what? Before she could continue on her trail of thought, a sharp yell reached her ears from somewhere very close. Her eyes flew open, and she was instantly on her feet, her hands reaching for her pack, until she realized it was still laying on the ground. Transferring into panic mode, she began weighing the pros and cons of reaching down for her weapons, but then her head cleared a bit, and she was able to take a better look at the person standing in front of her.

The name only took a second to surface. "Myla?" Her voice was shaky from the initial shock, but she quickly regained her composure.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, a bit of hysteria rising from her gut. It was a stupid question to ask, seeing as Myla was part of the uprising, and therefore had every reason to be at the uprising's location. But she had to ask it anyway, the tension in her body and mind causing her temper to stand on edge. Leaning down to pick up her pack, she clenched it tightly in her fist, considering what might happen if she decided to run again. Then she wouldn't have to deal with any of this.

"I'm, uh.. coming back to the Uprising. I kind of.. flipped out after the incident.. but I'm back now. Hopefully for good. Where the hell did you go, anyways? You left even before I did."

Myla's smile threw her for a loop, suspicion bristling at the prospect of whatever this girl could possibly be happy about. The situation had been slowly growing clearer (Myla emerging from the forest. Myla stepping backwards. Myla saying words like, "... Coming back."); Myla hadn't stuck around either.

So they were both deserters then, leaving the Uprising behind even though they had pledged their time and their funds and their skills to the whole 'take down the capitol' mantra? The nostalgia hit her in waves, from watching Scamp ruin meals with sloppy knife throwing, to making crap bombs with the lack of proper materials she had to work with. The grin was returned, and she cocked her head. Traitors of the trade, it seemed that they were in the same boat, once again.

"I vacationed in District Four, visited the water..." She responded truthfully after a small pause, looking down to pick at her nails. "What incident?"

It didn't surprise her that there might have been a complication. Fights had constantly broken out over the remains of District Thirteen, all about food and space, misunderstood words, and judging by the amount of fists thrown, something was bound to happen sooner or later. She was sad she had missed it, honestly. Things were getting so dull, the meetings full of food and idle dialogue instead of really getting down to business, and it had annoyed her to high hell how their supply provider in the capitol hadn't sent word for quite some time...

It was as if everything had been at a stand still. That's probably why she had thrown those explosives when she did, watching the wanderer scramble through the surrounding brush, setting trees aflame while it tried to douse the fire on its skin against the dirt on the ground. Seph hadn't even been able to catch an unobstructed view of its face, but either way, it was someone imposing on the uprising who had to be dealt with. And even if it wasn't... no one would miss them. That's why she loved the stragglers wandering Panem's outskirts; they usually had nothing to live for.

Glancing up, she leveled with Myla's gaze. "And welcome back." Here is your welcoming committee.