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Willow Wolf has always been trigger happy.
(In both senses of the idiom.)
Guns had always existed in the back of her mind. Some people in her alleyways carried them - if they’d scrounged up enough cash or drugs to purchase one from an outsider - but she was more used to witnessing punches and brawls and maybe the occasional knife. Pulling out a firearm in broad daylight was a one-way ticket to police sirens.
But she’s a good girl and knew how to avoid trouble like that before she could tie her shoelaces.
She supposes this was bound to happen, but she’s not quite sure where it stopped being youthful indiscretions and where it started being an actual problem with actual consequences.
Equally so, Willow has always been a fast learner.
Lesson one: You can get away with an awful lot of things with a mere slap on the wrist when you’re a quiet, malnourished, pitiful little thing with parents who haven’t seen the outside of a jail cell in one million billion trillion zillion years.
More like five, really, but who’s counting?
Willow. Willow is counting. Every once in a while she would utilise her decent arithmetic skills (or Daisy’s scientific calculator - the huge grey one with about fifty buttons that she kept safe in a drawer) and calculate how long it’d been since those cops were at her door, about to change the course of her life forever.
Her foster mother caught her in the act once and it didn’t take her long to connect the dots. Willow was fifteen and postively scarlet with embarrassment at this accidental display of vulnerability that screamed “I do actually give an occasional fuck about sentiment no matter how unbothered I pretend to be.”
Daisy had simply squeezed her shoulder and let her do her thing. Some things aren’t meant to be tampered with.
The twenty-five year old notorious criminal no longer does this—but if you asked her how many years it had been since her parents were arrested, she could give you an automatic answer—and then blush and smile nervously and stare at the floor because Holy Fucking Shit that was mortifying and I’m not supposed to care about that anymore.
Typical, really.
***
Willow Wolf has always been trigger happy.
And her finger is always on that trigger.
She can’t seem to take it off, actually.
Lesson two was that you have to hit people before they can hit you. It is, of course, the only way to stay safe in a world that is constantly hitting.
Sometimes that includes hitting loudly and unnecessarily, but that is something you have to be willing to make do with for safety. Life as a whole is nothing but a gamble, as addictive as if you were gambling with money.
It’s rather different with a gun. It’s permanent and violent and pretty damn difficult to hide the damage it causes. You can’t simply apologise or plead innocent or beg your little brother to stop crying so loudly the first and only time you hit him.
She still feels nauseous whenever she thinks about that, even a decade after the kid went missing. William is the only person in the entire continent of Evalia that Willow swore would not become a victim of her mounting frustration.
Well. She’s never claimed to be good at keeping promises.
William, on the other hand, was positively obsessed with the idea of promises. He’d stick his pinky finger out towards his older sister whenever either sibling claimed something they might not be able to claim later down the line - and she’d reluctantly hook hers through his - just to watch him smile.
He never broke one of his, not once.
Willow broke one.
I’ll always be around to keep you safe.
***
The third lesson was more of a practical one.
Much more her style. All of this emotional nonsense is getting exhausting.
And that was how to work an actual gun, not just the hair trigger her brain operated alongside. How to discharge the magazine and how to rack the slide, how to aim it accurately and how to efficiently scare the shit out of Pony with it.
That last one wasn’t really on purpose. She couldn’t help that he was just a wimp.
Willow Wolf has always been trigger happy, but the possession of a revolver was about to bring this right to the surface.
A few months before she’d involuntarily left to become a mindless government drone, Daisy had been firm that any weapon in her daughter’s possession was to be used for self-defense and (occasionally) recreational purposes only — followed by a lecture about public safety and laws and… well… that was when Willow stopped listening.
She had a lot of respect for Daisy, more so than any other adult - but it was a cheap, half-assed 6-shot single action revolver. Not a big red button labelled “Press Me!” attached to a nuclear bomb.
Everything was going to be just fine.
And, yes, both were equally tempting and inviting of trouble for an unstable young girl like herself. But admitting that would also mean admitting that she probably shouldn’t be able to have a gun at all and that’s Really Really Really Boring.
***
Willow sort of wishes she could say her fourth lesson was something plastered across the front of a self-help magazine like “She learnt to cope alone after her entire family disappeared!” but all of that bullshit isn’t real anyway.
Nobody actually recovers from anything.
Anyone who does is a doll selected to feature in the Media’s Perfect Dollhouse and everybody else is a doll who lives in the neighbouring houses. They don’t matter, and they don’t need to pretend that life gets better, because it doesn’t. And Willow Wolf is definitely one of the discarded dolls at the end of the street.
Which is why she feels perfectly comfortable taking off at twilight with nothing but her gun and an inability to control herself when it came to said gun.
(And some spare ammo, obviously. She’s a responsible twenty year old girl woman. AkA an adult. AkA responsible. Responsible firearm owners always bring spare ammo on their excursions.)
She likes the quarry, because it’s quiet when the workers have cleared off, nobody really questions the mild property damage and she can stay for a decent amount of time without risking anything.
Willow shoots anything. The stuff that’s practically made to be torn to shreds and the stuff that probably should be kept intact, but the two groups meet in the middle like a Venn Diagram.
Glass bottles.
Bang.
Cans.
Bang.
A road sign.
Bang.
Sheets of cardboard—
—For God’s sake, you get the idea, don’t you? You’d be a special sort of idiot if you didn’t. We’re moving on. Catch up.
Occasionally somebody unfamiliar makes their way down to her designated target practice; Willow jumps in fear every single time and it takes a lot of willpower not to instantly aim the gun at their person. Usually they move on swiftly. Teenage boys on their bikes often heckle her a little, but that’s to be expected.
Once, a pair of little kids, a taller girl and a shorter boy, come down looking for limestone after (apparently, from what Willow could hear) procrastinating their geology project all month. They were rightfully alarmed at the sight of her. Or by the sight of the revolver and the neat row of litter, each complete with a spattering of holes.
Same thing, really.
She sits tight and watches the kids collect their stupid rocks.
Willow is not fond of the feeling of children being scared of her. That definitely wouldn’t be a good look in the Dollhouse, would it? Isn’t that literally the prerogative? Women are caregivers. She may have been a caregiver once, but the decision against having her own children was made years ago.
Maybe she’ll foster. That would be a good look.
Satisfied, the girl scurries away and the boy copies her. They looked rather similar. Siblings, probably.
Then Willow cocks the revolver once more and fires all six rounds into a bottle that shattered after three.
***
The tragic fall of modern society.
What an inconvenience.
Or maybe not? The beginning of the infection got Willow out of prison and gave her life some sort of direction that nothing else could have. Sure, everybody crying and moping because all of their loved ones had died is sad - but Willow had done that little spiel years ago. She didn’t have any family to lose to the apocalypse.
Really, she’s grateful for that. Everybody else either needs to get with it or get out.
Her crew is a bit like that, but they’re malleable, too. She likes their company — and they like her, don’t they? Yes. Of course they do. Willow may be younger than the vast majority of the members, but that’s never been an issue. No. They do what they’re told and they know what happens if they don’t.
Take Pony for an example. He knew this was coming. He knew this was coming the second he heard Willow’s distorted voice on that radio and, clearly, was too cowardly to speak up and save his pretty girl. He knew.
Which is probably why he doesn’t look all that shocked when Willow unhooks her revolver from her belt and points it directly at the worst mistake of her life.
(This one’s for you, William.)
She hardly has time to wonder if this is what he would have wanted before her finger flies to the trigger and pulls, confirming what she’s always known.