xxii.
Three months in and Sawyer began to wonder if it was working.
He kept himself always at a distance between the child, never showing a single thread of kindness towards her. He made sure not to be overly antagonistic; just barely unwilling enough to help that no one would rely upon him for anything regarding her needs.
To that effect, it was working. Meredy never asked him to babysit alone (she never asked Macbeth either, but that was a different problem) and no one looked to him for help when the brat was crying her eyes out or whining about something. If he turned the other way and covered his ears, it was almost as if she didn't even exist.
"Almost" being the keyword here.
Looking at the bigger picture, he was surprised the others hadn't rebelled yet. He thought for sure at least Erik, if not Sorano, would finally buckle and give everyone the piece of their mind he knew they were holding back. Instead, Sorano doted on the toddler, seeming more and more softened by the day. Erik did the opposite, clamming up almost entirely when she was around.
He could feel it. The taut string of tension running throughout the group. He certainly didn't have Erik's ability of reading minds (sorry, souls) but he had enough nervous energy of his own to recognize the same within the group. They were on the edge of something occurring, even more so after Macbeth's train debacle, so why hadn't they snapped yet?
He wondered if he was going about it the wrong way. In his haste to distance himself from the entire thing, maybe he'd neglected to fully stir up the others in this unfairness. Perhaps the timing was just off. There was a lot to complain about the first week or so, but as they grew more complacent, he could see where his advantage may have slipped. Inwardly he chastised himself. Too fast for his own good, yet again.
Still, it was hard to deny that his efforts didn't have some mark on the group. Sawyer felt he stood as a beacon of resistance, the final part of the emotional wall keeping the child from being fully accepted into the full inner circle. If that was his role for now, he would fulfill it with utmost diligence.
(Lately, however, at night, he'd stay up and think unwelcome thoughts about his own pettiness, how he was making things harder on everyone with no real reward at the end, and how he damned himself along with the girl. These thoughts struck only a night, when there was nothing else to distract him from his own mind.)
So he was surprised when, one day, Erik came up to talk with him alone. He didn't even have to introduce the topic at hand, only stare at him with his single left eye. "She's getting too dangerous, we need to do something before it gets out of hand."
We. Sawyer paused. "You saying she's dangerous just by herself?"
"She will be." He didn't elaborate on this. Sawyer bit his lip. He didn't fully understand what he meant by that, but it didn't matter so much at this point. Whether or not his own behavior was the cause, it at least helped mark him as a potential ally. Right now, that was all he needed.
Sometimes, even when you're wrong, it's good to be right.
"Just say the word, I'll be ready."