The Shauna Your Shauna Could Play Like

[Namira]

((Shauna continued from The Spirit World))

Shauna sat with her back to a tree, shotgun across her knees as she made the world's saddest attempt at haircare.

Attempting to brush it netted her snag after snag as she utterly failed to produce any headway through the tangles, and even as she moved the brush further and further out to try and make it through less and less hair, the curls remained locked together like the jaws of an iron trap. Why didn't she think to put on a hood or something? Staying dry wouldn't have salvaged the situation, given how her hair got when it went unwashed for even a day or two, but it certainly would have staved off the inevitable descent into matted hell.

Shauna glanced up at the tied-together pair of coats that she'd slung across a low hanging branch to improvise a lean-to. She was trying not to think about how those clothes didn't belong to her, the fact she'd pawed through Caroline's things to grab whatever she thought was useful. She tried telling herself that the other girl would be glad to see that her possessions were being put to good use, but truthfully she didn't know Caroline well enough to make that call. Faith and Matt had clearly known both Caroline and Regina better than she had, but being first to the scene of the crime had left her with first pick of the grave.

She was such a shitty person.

At least she was a vaguely-dry shitty person for the first time in what felt like literal days, though. The consolation was so slender that you couldn't see it from the side, but at least it was the tiniest edge off of Shauna's discomfort. She sighed, set the hairbrush aside, and started to sift through her hair with her fingers instead. If nothing else she could separate the clumps into something a tiny bit more manageable, even if maintaining any kind of style was a lost cause at this point. Bit by bit, she picked through, tugging and gently teasing, grimacing at the unpleasant oily feeling of her fingertips. Who knew, survive for a few more days and she could have the makings of dreadlocks, something she'd never had the courage to attempt for, well, mostly awkward reasons. Self confidence, concern that they'd make people look down on her, or look at her as some kind of thug. Probably not rational, but when she heard all those stories about cops and black kids... it just made her nervous.

A few more days. A few more days a few more days. Who even said she'd make it that long? If she'd stumbled upon Regina and Caroline before they both finished dying, if Quinn hadn't decided to leave her alone for some reasons, heck, if she'd blundered into the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong mood, she'd be dead already, too.

She looked at the shotgun. She could defend herself now, but could she defend herself? Did she have that in her, to point the gun at somebody else and pull the trigger? No powers!true crime!Shauna had done it. Shauna had written that. Staring down the barrel of a gun at her adversary as T'Challa bled out on the warehouse floor, Shauna had agonised over it, but she'd pulled the trigger, she'd put all her doubt and hesitancy into that bullet and she'd saved the day...and been changed for doing it. Had needed to be pulled back from the brink of despair by her friends. And sure, Shauna had poured herself into that story, had felt it intensely, had even cried while writing some of those cooldown scenes where the other characters helped her up out of the depths, but that... that person who could do what needed to be done because it was right, not because it was easy, do the brutal thing, take a life because it was what had to be done. It was a fictionalised, idealised person, the kind of person that didn't balk at a challenge and didn't fall victim to nerves at the crucial moment, who came through for her friends, no matter what. That wasn't her.

Was it?

((Shauna continued in I'm Here))