Strange enough, it's not the nightmares that she hates the most. It's not the fact that she wakes up gasping most night, still feeling the hot breath upon her face. It's not the fact that, when she closes her eyes, she can still feel the cold steel in her hands, see his desperate eyes. Sometimes, she even turns around, half expecting the Hunter to be standing there, expecting something of his own.
It's not that she hates. It's not even the small things, the ways that the memories sneak up on her when she thinks that finally, finally, she can forget. It's not that men in dreadlocks make her freeze or that she flinches at alligators, grimacing at the whipping of their tail, imagining that force exerted through a human body. Or that she can't watch monster movies anymore, doesn't know what to say when people ask about her scar.
She can't use a camera anymore, can't touch that traitorous metal without remembering his affinity to capture every moment then the smile fades as she sees once more the gaping hole in his chest, the still warm gun, his last, desperate attempt to save everyone, to see his sons, to make that precious life last just one more second before the darkness overwhelmed him. She shudders then, at the knowledge that he, too, gave birth to one of those monsters and wonders if perhaps it was the one she speared. And even though she knows that can't be true, that the alien was far too old, she still feels the small thrill of vengeance.
But it's not these things she hates.
It's that she is the one left alive to feel them. It's that she stands here, breathing, moving, livingwhen so many good people never will again. It's that they left her stranded, with a story too ridiculous to believe and all the proof she has is a spear and the disappearances of a dozen people whose bodies were obliterated in the flash of blue that still haunts her dreams. It's that she has to live for them, for the humans, and even, in some strange, but oddly right, way, a hunter
It's that she used to look out over the ice and know that she was isolated, alone, free.
And now, she never can be.