nine // ranier addams

ranier addams
fifteen
district nine
cw: war and cancer

Bullets shoot over the top of Ranier's head like mosquitoes, whipping up her tufty mouse-brown hair into swirls and flicks with their slipstreams. She crouches down behind an overturned car, her head between her outlandishly bony knees as she shelters from the battle. There's no tremor in either of her long-fingered hands as she patiently waits for the moment to strike back - foolishly, she thinks she's braver than she ought to be, but that's had the effect of making her braver all the same. Tricking herself into doing things beyond sense is a speciality of hers. Her lips are pressed together like two fingers, as pale as her face is. When a mortar goes off somewhere to her right, her whole lanky body flinches visibly, but the stern expression on her face remains. She is aware of the vitality of her situation, and even her mounting excitement to be actually in the action can't distract her from it.

Ranier knows the time is right in the first heartbeat of silence following the hailstorm of bullets. Her reflexes are as quick as they've always been (even when she was younger she was able to catch falling objects inches from the ground) and she surges up as soon as the impulse strikes her. Some may see it as a weakness, following impulse so blindly, but everyone following Ranier in the battle is surely struck by the determination in her actions. Her boyish eyebrows scrunch together, her green eyes glare with the fire of adrenaline. She raises her hands, and the rifle they cling to, first above her head and then down into an aiming position, ready to point and kill any enemy she sees - eager to. She is striding forwards now, obscenities far beyond any other fifteen year-old's vocabulary reeling from her mouth, her heart a fist pounding at her ribcage. One head begins to emerge above the enemy shelter; Ranier locks on with predatorial determination, stepping purposefully towards the target, and her finger begins to squeeze the trigger-

"Ranier."

August's voice says he's frustrated with her, although he's too timid to tell her in words. Coming back to her senses, her eyes unglaze and adjust to the light of the living room. It's her house - or cottage, more accurately - and the golden light that sings through the bare glass window suggests it's some time in the early afternoon. One of Ranier's talents is navigating time and space using only the natural world but this does often prevent her seeing the beauty in it, instead using it as a calculated set of axes around her which simply have a utility. They sit next to each other on the old sofa that Ranier's parents repurposes from a dump site several years ago. It still has the smell of damp and age in it, but its new owners have taken care of it well. Ranier doesn't need to guess where she gets her "waste not, want not" attitude from.

Looking down, Ranier realises she isn't wearing the leather vestments she was in her fantasy, but a faded pair of trousers and a hand-knitted jumper. She pulls the latter closer to her thin frame desperately; now she has realised she's underdressed in a cold room she can feel it. For all Ranier knows, she could have been daydreaming for half an hour - August's face says as much, and she can also read in it that he's probably been talking to her for that entire time. "Sorry," although she isn't usually embarrassed, quite the contrary in that she'll fight and talk back even when she knows she's in the wrong, she has a tenderness for August's feelings that shifts her behaviour significantly, "I was just-"

"I know," he cuts her off tiredly, but with that same hesitance that indicates his nervousness around her. Ranier knows how unlikely it is that the two of them get on as well as they do, but supposes it has everything to do with the fact that she is a natural leader while he is perfectly comfortable as a follower. The two are young still but their personalities are very much developed. Their friendship developed at least from their shared love of imagination, Ranier creating an action-packed story for them to follow in their made-up adventures and August providing the beautiful details. For that much she admires August, how he's able to develop his imagination beyond just strategy and into building worlds upon worlds. The potential of her own daydreams stops at considering all the possible routes for a mission to take.

Ranier's strategic mind isn't just a happy affliction for her, but something she sees as a means to an end. Despite what her parents say when they see her playing war, shouting at August who bounds silently but bright-eyed behind her, she knows there's a place where her District status won't matter compared to her military prowess. She doesn't mind which side she's fighting for (though she's sure she can find more reasons to hate the Capitol than the rebels) as long as she's putting her skills to use. In fact, it's one of the only things she ever resents her mother and father for. Especially now her younger twin siblings are getting sicker, the poisonous chemical air filling their lungs with cancer, she does her best to be considerate of them and not wasting their time by distracting their attention. She may not have respect for people who demand it, but she certainly has sympathy for those who deserve it.

Nevertheless, Ranier's upbringing has been satisfactory - she has no real desire to run away and join the fight for now, appreciating her moderate safety at home and keeping the battles to her imagination. Though they're poor, her parents work hard and she helps them to make their life as well-equipped a haven as it can be. And though August, perhaps, is the only person she's ever considered a friend, causing too much trouble at school for other children to want to get involved with her, there are definitely other people she feels comfortable around. In all, though, Ranier's knack for survival, and her refusal to back down from aggression until she's vindicated, means she's comfortable with the way she lives her life. And if nothing drastic changes in the years to come, she know she will surely continue to be.