sirenspull_logs | It's a Saturday night special

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It's a Saturday night special

Who: Anya Lehnsherr and John Winchester
When: Friday afternoon
Where: A secluded bit of forest by the coast
Summary: Shooting, heart to hearts, and fried food
Warnings: Guns.

[It's one of the rare days Anya and John actually made plans for a shooting lesson. He would rather not admit it, but John always finds himself looking foreward to these days, when he can relax and teach like he had with Sam and Dean years ago.

The whole notion of teaching a teenage girl to shoot was uncomfortable, at first. Shouldn't kids her age be learning how to attract boys and and put on makeup? That's what girls do, right? In any case, she was persistent, and he finally caved. He's glad he did.

Something about teaching Anya made him feel proud. He'd always wanted a daughter, and doing this somehow filled that longing.

Dammit, it's creepy when he put it that way.

In any case, it's shooting day, and Anya's late. John is getting antsy, but he's been a little high strung all day so it's not a big thing. She'd never been this late before. Is she okay? Did she forget? Is there some guy he needs to kill?

Goddammit, man, don't think like that. To calm his frayed nerves, he fishes out a can of lukewarm beer from his backpack and cracks it open.]

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She's been going through the motions, lately. Proficiently, because going through the motions made up an uncomfortably large chunk of her life before the Port, if not quite as smoothly as she'd like, as she got back to work after her episode after dark. That's how she thinks of it, getting sliced up and almost poisoned to death: an episode. She got careless, but the doc put her back together better than she'd expected, and if she's not exactly fighting fit yet, she can at least fake it without wincing.

So she'd confirmed the lesson, but she's been busy straightening out the paperwork for her inheritance of the hotel - again, and does the Port bureaucracy ever despise the way newcomers come and go - and trying not to dwell on how much she's lost, and she didn't realize the time until ten minutes after she should have left.

She arrives in a harried power walk, too wary of pulling her stitches and too asthmatic to run from the subway to their makeshift range even at a jog. She shoves the the hair back out of her eyes focuses on spacing out her small breaths so that it doesn't sound too much like desperate panting. She's got this. She's fine.

"Hey," she greets him, with a wave and a good effort at a smile. Little gasp in, out, in. "Sorry I'm late. Got lost in paperwork. Can I have one of those?"

John stiffens when he hears someone moving through the trees, but he calms down once he realizes it's just her. He shouldv'e been paying more attention, anyway. No telling what a Native would do if they came across a Newcomer in the woods packing heat.

When she gets close enough for him to get a good look, he's suddenly concerned. She's obviously running a little ragged, from god knows what. She's hiding it good, but he's been hurt enough to recognize that particular brand of careful He hopes it's just the hike out; she's always seemed winded on the way here.

Jesus, he's gotten paranoid.

"Well," he says, eyeing her warily "you think you're in any shape to have one?" It's not the best way to ask if she's okay, but he doesn't know another way to put it to her.

The longer she stands still, the more air she can get in each neatly paced inhale.

"Yeah," she answers with a shrug, relieved that at least he's not going to be an American about it. "I mean, I shouldn't have more than one, I haven't eaten in -" she has to think about it for a second, not since breakfast, she's just been busy "- a while. I'm not planning to chug it or anything."

She could use a drink, after everything; hopefully the alcohol will take the edge off the odd aches in her back. She's as compelled as ever to seem like she can handle anything, even when she's showing off her vulnerability to get someone's help, maybe especially then.

Plus, she's thirsty.

He stares her down hard for a few seconds before coming to a decision.

"After." He puts his can down to rummage through his bag again. He finds the water bottle with a little effort, and tosses it her way. "You get that right now. You do good, you get a beer."

The least he could do is have some semblance of responsibility. He's already letting a minor handle deadly weapons. She doesn't need to be under the influence while she uses them.

"Fair enough," she agrees, inclining her head. She's used to being judged. At least with John, being good enough is an option. (She has a power now - but she's not thinking about that. Guns are simpler.) She gulps down a good third of the water bottle, and by the time she's got her breath back after that, her asthma has basically subsided.

"Drink the rest."

As the words are coming out of his mouth, he realizes with a start that he's falling back into his old training habits. Make them keep hydrated. Give them incentive. Next thing he knows, he'll be yelling at her to do twenty laps and don't you dare question me, son.

Well that's a blast from the past he never wanted.

He shakes the thought from his head, instead opting for a more relevant topic. "You had any time to practice since we last did this?"

Drinking the rest so quickly would give her a heavy side-stitch just now, but she doesn't say it, makes a show of obedience instead. She takes another mouthful, tips the bottle up high to give the impression that it's a larger swallow than it is, then acts casually as if that was all that was requested. If he pushed again she'd make a fuss about it.

"Some. Not as much as I'd like." Not as much as last time, in spite of the longer interval. "I got caught up in some things." She waves a hand, vaguely more than dismissively. Partly it's her tendency toward privacy, but the idea of concern is nice one; mostly it's old, ingrained axioms, a deeply rumbled excuses are for the week.

She gets her handgun out of her quaintly old-fashioned purse - she likes the look of it, and it's another white feather fanned behind her mask of harmlessness - and checks it, briskly and meticulously. She's not practiced enough yet for the motions to be automatic, and the small, local focus it requires is soothing.

Edited 2012-08-18 08:41 (UTC)

He frowns, but decides water isn't something he needs to push on. A little dehydration won't kill anyone.

"Have you cleaned it like I showed you?" he asks, retrieving his own handgun from the backpack. "It's not going to shoot right if you don't take good care of it."

"Yes. I did. I do." She says it quietly, steely, not quite defiant by the expedient of focusing her eyes down on the weapon rather than at John. There's a conviction to it, a you may know this much is true. No one left in the Port knows her real name, but this, this is real. She's had very few things to call her own, and she takes care of them right, useful tools most especially.

"Good. That's good." John gives her a quick smile

"We're doing something different today." He walks a few paces away from her, looking for something that isn't quite in plain sight. "I've put the targets all around, so you'll have to find them. It won't be easy." He turns back to grin at her conspiratorially. "You think you can handle that, kid?"

She smiles back, small but fierce and real.

"It's better than them finding me, right?" She checks her grip, then focuses, footsteps quiet in the leaf litter as she moves. It's not the same as walking soundlessly through ostentatious marble hallways, but the basic principles are similar. She doesn't quite follow him, walking about 15º off his trajectory, noticing his sightline and the way his shoulders are pointed, trying to get a different angle on whatever he's looking for.

"Damn straight."

"There's fifteen targets in all. You find ten," he pauses to check if she's following him. Reassured, he starts moving again. "You get free dinner on me. And your beer."

They come to a clearing, and it's here where he stops He's already set up the rest of his things, a folding chair and and a few boxes of ammo. He heaves his tired ass into the chair and continues the lesson breakdown.

"You find less then ten before we have to pack it in before sirens, you get to run back to civilization."

"It better be a nice dinner," she tells him, grabbing just enough spare ammo - combined with what's loaded in her pistol already - to hit each target once. "As an incentive, I mean, given that I can feed myself fine."

The familiar stiff-necked pride is only thinly glazed with the smirk she gives him before slipping away between the trees. It's a point that a part of her can't not make. It's the first time she's ever had a chance to be independent, in spite of way distrust was pounded into her. That she can be self-reliant is hugely important to her.

"Whatever you want, kid, as long as you don't break my wallet."

He grins, and waves her away. As he watches her go, he thinks he should feel bad about this. He never did anything close to this for Dean and Sam. At least, they never got rewards like this. It was usually negative reinforcement with them.

He can't do that with Anya, though. OF course not. She's not his daughter. You can't just force someone else's girl to run five miles for missing a few targets.

For some reason, that particular thought makes John strangely sad.

Edited 2012-09-10 01:36 (UTC)

The challenge is the time limit, more than the targets. Once she finds one, she could do them execution-style close-up if she wanted, he's not watching. That wouldn't be the point, but she could. But the task isn't honing a sharpshooting edge, it's the search. She takes a zig-zag grid along one side of the clearing, looking for bootmarks, disturbed leaf litter, anything. If she can track where John went, she can find where he put them.

Maybe he doubled back, left a dozen false trails. Maybe the targets are all in another area entirely. Maybe there are only nine targets.

She spots one, breathes, closes her eyes for a moment. She has to stop thinking like this, she's making herself crazy. John doesn't play impossible headgames, he doesn't lie and change the rules. Yet.

She hits the target. Scoops of a handful of shards as proof, then moves on.

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It's a Saturday night special

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john can sometimes be lazy :|

Re: john can sometimes be lazy :|

Re: john can sometimes be lazy :|

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