Title: Rowr!
Summary: After escaping the castle in Germany, Mara doesn't know what to do. (Post MR3)
Dedication: This fanfiction was inspired by a thread titled "Rowr!" on the Fanfiction Flock on Maximum-X. Since that thread was dedicated to rootlessdream (to whom I've never spoken), I suppose this fic is, in a roundabout way, dedicated to her as well. I found the file on a computer I haven't used in years and decided to finally upload it.
It's darker now and cold; she shivers. The castle might have been unpleasantly moist, but the central heating always took the edge off the chill.
The snow crackles under her feet, and she cocks her head at the white ground, searching for a word she cannot find. It's short and sharp, the syllable always slices through her breath to shatter against the air, but she cannot think of it- ice. She is curious; never before has she been allowed outside in winter.
She rips at it with claws extended, picks some up, and fists her hand, only stopping when the fragments cut her fingers and palm and blood begins to drip onto the snow, red snow, with the familiar smell of prey and food and the hunt mixed up with the thin air on the mountain and the painful chilliness which hurts the inside of her nose. And now that she smells the smell of food, she's reminded that it's been many hours since she has eaten.
She shakes the melting ice from her hand and rubs her palm on the sleeve of her jumpsuit, which is white to reflect her background of snow and so shows the blood clearly, a large red stain which slowly spreads. She tucks her hand into her side and squats in her thinking position, brow furrowed, nose flared, and folded legs which do not quiver now but will begin to shake soon unless she finds whatever prey the doctors placed out here for her to chase and kill.
She's never been alone before, and this aloneness feels fake, like someone in a white coat is watching her from behind a tree, recording everything she does on a clipboard and maybe videotaping her. And she doesn't know what they want to study, because they haven't told her what to do, what her objective is. The only thing she knows is that a youngish doctor with brown hair shouted at her and her handlers to get out, stay low, they're storming the castle. And she got out through a window and now she's wandering on the mountain above the castle, hand bleeding and stomach churning and confusion on her face as she tries to figure out what they want to test.
There! Movement, and she whirls toward it and drops into a defensive crouch. But she's more relieved than anything else, because they've finally come to tell her what to do, how to act.
But nothing's there. It's just a snow flurry, and suddenly the knowledge hits that she really is on her own, by herself, and she can't breathe because how could they abandon her like this? She's been good mostly, not Omega-good, but good nevertheless, doing her chores and not fighting when they shock her because she's not trying as hard as they know she could. She hasn't given them any reason to leave her alone.
She's been good. She has, and so they must be out here, watching her shake and writing what she does on their clipboards. She just hasn't seen them or smelled them yet. She relaxes. This explanation makes sense to her, and the fear-quivering goes away and leaves just the hunger-quivering.
Later she'll realize that she must have been hungrier than she thought: half-crazy from hunger, in fact. But at the time it seems perfectly reasonable for her to spring at a branch and slash at it, with high-pitched hiccup-sounds coming from the center of her chest. (Later she'll realize that she was laughing, an unusual occurrence.) The branch snaps off with a loud crack, and she lands heavily on her side in the icy snow with it caught in her claws. She breaks it into pieces with her claws and teeth and leaps to her feet unsteadily, scattering the fragments around and searching for something else to play with.
Then she sees the mountain lion crouched at the edge of the clearing, its yellow eyes following her intently. "Rowr!" Mara play-growls, stretching her fore-hands out in front of her and cocking her head.
She's surprised when the lion bares its teeth and snarls back. That's not in the game. A sliver of ice slides down her neck, melting, and the cold water wakes her up from whatever delirium she has been in. And she realizes that she's in big trouble here.
The mountain lion is male and enormous for his species, easily thirty pounds more than Mara's one hundred and ten, and his crisply lashing tail shows that he's eaten more recently than her. He snarls again, lowering himself even lower to the ground. She backs away, instinct telling her to keep her head towards him. Eyes down in front of her, Mara struggles to make him understand that she's leaving, that she didn't mean to encroach on his territory. Apparently he gets the message, because he stays where he is until Mara reaches the other side of the clearing and turns and runs as fast as she can on her shaking legs.
Mara doesn't stop until she scares a rabbit out of hiding; then she chases it with wild abandon. She loses it; rabbits are faster when they're not trapped in a room with her. Shame fills Mara. She is not being the best. The scientists watching her saw her lose that rabbit. She puts her head down and determinedly tries to find another.
When Mara finishes tearing her first catch into pieces, she looks around with confusion. No one is stepping out from behind the trees with a clipboard.
But Mara will not stop trying to excel, even though this test is longer than any of the others.
She leaves her kill behind and waves her tail. This is to show her observers that Mara is more than up to the test, whatever this test is.
She tells herself that the cold feeling in her stomach is from the ice she ate along with her kill.