Late at night, I think of you [Bailey]

If You Cannot

Come back again, just don't lie to me don't leave, even if you can't say those words I may be a fool but, I cannot keep waiting for you yet to say goodbye to you is something i could never do please, do not go far away please, do not go far away where I can't find you do not go so far away do not go so far away Please don't leave me don't leave make a promise to me, I beg you-----------------

Bailey was getting tired of the heat, really tired of it. She walked around with the scouts in the mornings and evenings, and while the mornings weren't terribly hot the evenings were nearly unbearable. You would think she'd be used to the heat after living so long in the forest without air conditioning but if you knew Bailey you knew she was most at home in winter when there was five feet of snow on the ground and a chilly wind blowing through. She often chose to do the jobs in winter that nobody else wanted, because she loved being out in the cold that much. She was an aspiring ice skater before everything went to shit, of course she'd still want to enjoy the cold. That's when Holly let her ice skate. Of course because she couldn't practice year round her skills were rusty but they always came back quickly.

She just was not happy in summer. Especially during the day. She tended to stay in the shade or stick closer to camp in the summer, but in the evenings once the sun finally set things cooled off considerably and she rather enjoyed walking around the camp at night. She went to check on the guard dogs one last time before heading in some random direction. She looked up at the sky through the trees and smiled a little as she saw so many stars. You didn't see this many stars in cities or suburbs.

Funny, it took losing everything to notice how wasteful they were being.

The camp didn't waste anything, not a single thing. They couldn't afford to. Bailey was jealous of the vampires, who right now were probably enjoying an evening out or an evening in front of a fireplace reading a book. She didn't hate the vampires, Holly was a good influence for that. There was only one vampire she loathed and it was the one that started it all. The damn Monarch. He forced humans to act as slaves, “pets” he called them, or be killed. She lost her entire family, if they were even still alive she didn’t want to risk looking for them. She hoped her parents were still alive. She knew her dogs probably were adopted by the vampires that raided their neighborhood, or were even killed.

She wiped her eyes, trying hard not to cry. She cried her tears long ago. She couldn’t afford to shed any more. She pressed her hands to her eyes for a few moments before continuing her walk. The guard dogs gave her that outlet; the need to play and train the dogs helped her cope with losing her Emmy and Todd. Sure she had to teach the dogs to sniff out vampires and attack on command but they were also gentle dogs. She let the children of the camp play with them, only if she was with them, and the dogs were really well behaved. She just had to train them to be killers.

War did awful things. Every human that wasn’t a pet had to learn to survive, they needed to survive. Just wanting it wasn’t enough. While Bailey was a scout and knew basic fighting skills, and her years using her skate blades as makeshift knives helped, she needed to know more. She realized she wouldn’t last very long with her current set of skills and while other scouts were very willing to help and a few even taught her how to throw knives and shoot guns she needed to be better at actually fighting. She was agile enough, she just needed more help.

So Bailey decided to go to the only person she trusted enough with teaching her how to fight, and that man brought them back to the camp. She gulped when she realized she might get personal training sessions with Theo, but he was the one who trained the warriors and anybody willing to learn to defend themselves. She stood outside his tent for a while, staring at her nails and hoping he wasn’t sleeping. She didn’t want to wake him up if he was asleep, most of the camp started to go to bed for the evening. The only ones awake were the ones on scout duty, and Bailey never wanted the midnight shift. She didn’t trust herself to stay awake all night after a long day. The sun never set until after 9 in the summer so they used the light as often and as long as they could until they had to sleep.

That was another thing about vampires and humans; they were never on the same cycle. Humans were creatures of the sun, and vampires were creatures of the night. Bailey usually felt safe during the day, as most vampires were still sleeping, but Hunters and Trackers tended to try and walk around during the day. Bailey laughed silently to herself. When did her life turn into a post-apocalyptic video game?

She built up her courage and opened the flap of Theo’s tent, about to make her presence known by clearing her throat or saying his name but cool air rushed into the tent. He turned around from his desk and she smiled, a little embarrassed that she was barging in on him like this. She dug the heel of her boot into the ground and looked down before looking back up at him. God he was handsome, the sun really bleached his beard red, though she should have been used to this look on him living at the camp for a few years, she wasn’t. He was just perfect in her eyes, everything about him. “Ah, sorry. Nothing’s wrong, just wanted to ask a favor.”