Turns out, Erica was right. The following day, when Eliza stuck her arm out to discover a new routine printed on it, it was considerably better. Unlike the days before, there was no training, which was itself an improvement, but better than that, she was assigned to attend classes all morning, whereas during the afternoon would be her first day working as part of the cleaning staff.
"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you!" Sabrina said, when she mentioned it to her, asking if it was normal to have such a big change. "I was interviewed yesterday about your adaptation."
Eliza tried not to resent her too much for forgetting about something like that.
"Since you didn't meet the requirements for soldier training yet, they wanted to know what you would be fit to do, and asked me to turn in my report on your behavior." Seeing Eliza's face, she hurried to explain. "Oh, don't worry, I said you were doing very well! And that you worked in cleaning before, so maybe they should consider it as your new job here."
Sabrina's face had a smile printed on, as if she had just given her the best news in the world.
Eliza nodded to her, simultaneously speechless and not wanting to ruin her happiness about having done something so good for her. However, she was having a hard time reconciling with the fact that for the whole time that they had been living together, Sabrina was making a report about her, and never thought that was something she should have mentioned.
It opened her eyes to the way the 13's might be looking at them, the outsiders. But it also had the best outcome that she could've hoped for, so there wasn't much to complain about.
They walked together to the canteen for breakfast as usual, and then parted ways as Sabrina went into a line with her friends. Eliza watched her curly haired figure walk away, staying in the line she had chosen, hearing someone call out her name a few minutes later.
"Liza! Liza!" Posy was waving her arms in the air, calling for her attention. Eliza saw her family with her, Vick also waving, a bit more modestly, and Mrs. Hawthorne trying to get Posy to stop screaming, with Gale sitting across from them.
Eliza smiled, waving back, and got the rest of her breakfast on her tray. She debated internally for a moment if that was an invite to sit with them or not, but eventually decided to take her chance. It was nice to see a familiar face.
Mrs. Hawthorne smiled at her as she got close to their table, and opened room for her to sit next to them.
"Hi. It has been a while." Eliza said. All the children were kept in the hospital area for the first few days, but it was the first time she saw any of them since arriving at the District.
"Yes, we were in the hospital, but now we go school." Posy stated happily.
"We are going to school, Posy." Vick corrected, with an entitled tone. "Not just go."
"You are going to school? What are you going to learn?" Eliza asked Posy, who, in return, stuck her arm out for her to see the classes she was having.
"They make you get this as well?" She passed her thumb on her arm, weirded out by the look of the ink on a child's skin.
"Apparently they can't afford having anyone out of their control." Gale said grumpily. "What do you have for today?" He asked a second later, pointing at her arm. Eliza showed it out to him, which in retrospect seemed a bit odd. "We have a class together. Nuclear History at 11:00."
The warm wave going through her body was indescribably comforting. She was not only having a chance to study in a real class, but wouldn't be alone doing it. At least for a while.
"These will be my first classes." She was trying to contain the excitement, while giving the first bite into her breakfast. "Have you been to any of them?"
"Yes, they started allowing District 12's like, two days ago. I'm not exactly sure why they started with me before everyone else."
Eliza thought for a bit, while chewing dry cereal from her bowl.
"It is probably because you were the one responsible that we got to survive a bomb attack, and automatically considered apt to take Nuclear History classes."
Mrs. Hawthorne looked at them sideways, as Gale opened his mouth to protest, but Vick and Posy chose that moment to start to argue loudly. And then something was dropped, spilling milk all over the floor near their table. It didn't take more than a few seconds for a man in a uniform and cleaning supplies to appear out of nowhere and clean it.
Eliza wondered if that would be her in a few hours.
"How dare you, waste food like that?!" Mrs. Hawthorne faltered, with an unusually loud tone. "Don't you remember how hard it is to get it?" Posy started to cry, and Vick kept murmuring things like, "It wasn't me, she started it."
Mrs. Hawthorne kept herself busy trying to clean the traces of milk on Posy's shirt, like Gale and Rory, oblivious to the familiar sound of Posy crying.
But Eliza couldn't take it anymore, the familiarity of it. She just wanted her to shut up.
"Here Posy, you can have a bit of mine." She said, putting her cup of milk on her tray.
"You don't have to do that." Gale said hurriedly, trying to return the cup to its original place.
"Eliza, please don't..." Mrs. Hawthorne started as well.
"No really, it's fine." She insisted, waving Gale's hand away. "I'm not very hungry anyway." She rearranged the tray and got ready to get up after checking the wall clock. "My class is starting soon. I should go"
Posy was drinking happily from the cup, and waved goodbye. Then the unthinkable happened.
"I'll go with you." Gale said, getting up. "We're going the same way."
She nodded without a word, trying to appear unbothered. As they headed out of the canteen, Eliza checked her wrist again, looking for the direction to take to the classroom.
She had talked to Gale before. It should be normal. But now that they were not in imminent danger, in the middle of the woods with no one to turn to, Eliza was having trouble finding a normal way to act.
"Have you been to the fifth floor since the Introductory course?" Gale asked, already moving through the corridor. She stared at him, and he turned, explaining, "The classrooms are all next to each other."
"Honestly, I can't really tell. Everything looks the same." She followed his lead, managing the courage to ask what had been concerning her since she first saw the schedule, "Is it too difficult? I mean, the classes, do you think they're easy to follow?"
She was scared to death of feeling like the dumb sheep. There had been enough of that in training already.
"I'm sure you'll be fine," he said reassuringly. "Most of the people there are either from District 12 or the youngsters from here. I don't think many of us really know what's going on most of the time."
"What did you enjoy the most until now?"
This is good, and useful. Keep talking about school and he might not notice how idiotic you feel right now.
And the truth was that she was dying of nerves, just as much as of excitement at that moment.
"There was one about machine engineering and designing. But I didn't have the chance to be in all of the classes."
"Are they keeping you busy with that?" She pointed at the weird looking bracelet he had on his wrist, that she had already noticed during breakfast.
"Yeah, it has something to do with it." He even blushed a little while answering. "It's kind of annoying really, I'm still learning how to use it, and most of the time it just beeps out of nowhere."
"Just another attention seeker." Eliza had meant it as a joke, that didn't really land according to Gale's impassive expression. "So, anyway, how did you get it?"
"Apparently I am now considered a relevant soldier to the Revolution Cause. I wonder why."
Eliza snorted in response, before she could help herself.
"Yeah, it's probably just because you're so tall." Then he snorted, and she was happy she finally could get a joke right. "The fact that you saved us from the explosions and are a great hunter is a bit redundant, honestly."
"I'm the only hunter you know, doesn't mean I'm great. I didn't really save you all, many people helped. You included." He replied, in a serious tone. "Maybe they should've given you one of these as well." He insisted.
This time, Eliza laughed out loud.
"Well, my combat skills were so unbelievable, that they even had to kick me out of training. If I was included in the Revolution cause, they wouldn't have stood a chance. It would end too quickly and kill all the fun."
Then Gale was the one laughing. "There is no way you're that bad."
"Bad enough that they simply decided I'm more suited to cleaning and studying, apparently."
"I didn't even know they were ditching people like that. I thought they'd exploit every last one of us to their full potential."
She huffed humorlessly.
"I guess you could say my full potential will be exploited by scrubbing the toilet of the third floor's bathroom, then."
"Now who's exaggerating?" He raised an eyebrow and she felt his look on her, making her blush and focus on the numbers marked on the corridor doors.
"This could be them just trying to figure out what people are good at. They were basically left with nine hundred more mouths to feed at the drop of a hat, maybe they're trying to put those people to good use." Gale continued.
"Yeah, I can understand that, of course. The thing is... I'm starting to think that things are done differently here. Apparently my roommate was writing a report of my adaptation. After my trainers said I should be laid off, she reported I'd be better exploited if I went back to cleaning, because I told her that's what I used to do back at home." Eliza explained. "The thing is...she never mentioned she was supposed to turn in a report, you know, about me. She just kept asking questions, and I took it as general interest."
Eliza had wanted to slap herself for how dumb she must have sounded telling Sabrina all she wanted to know so willingly.
"A report? They're making you share a room with someone who's writing a report about you?" Gale asked slowly, as if to confirm he got it right.
Eliza just nodded, but then waved the matter away with her hand.
"Whatever, it's not like she wasn't right. I'll probably do better at cleaning bathrooms than doing a set of pushups."
He didn't answer, but his brows didn't relax, keeping his face in a frown instead.
Their conversation was interrupted anyway as they reached the already half full classroom, with a few people from district 13 sitting together, chatting.
"I'll see you in the next one" Gale said, in goodbye. Eliza was left alone to decide where to sit and what to do with herself.
At least in class she was in her element.
A/N: I've only recently learned that you can leave author's notes on the chapter text itself, so better late than never: Thank you for reading this far, hopefully you're enjoying it. This story is also on other Fanfiction websites, so all of what's being posted was written a while ago. After chapter 20 the posting will likely slow down.
General comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed. I'm aware this is not the greatest work of fiction ever written. I'm writing as a hobby, and probably self-indulge a little too much sometimes, but I'm also open to improvement ^^