[Ava nods, and after she's caught her breath, wallowed in the feeling for a moment, she moves down the alley.
Ava doesn't quite know what night this is, at first. It's the alley behind the soup kitchen, and Sana and she used to climb the fire escape and talk, watching and listening to the city. It's admittedly not a particularly attractive place. There's an overstuffed dumpster, the paint on the fire escape is peeling and it's rusted in places, there are rats, skittering and screeching.
And there's a girl. She's in the rain without a coat, curled up on the ground against the dumpster. She's painfully thin, brown eyes flat and dull, red hair wet with the rain, and there's a duffle bag that she holds onto like a lifeline. Scrawny, starved, desperate and like exhaustion was wearing on the last shred of herself. The rats scuttle around her in the dark, hard to see save for the way their small bodies make the shadows shift.
One look at her younger self, and Ava knows exactly what night this is. She stands there, a little awkwardly, hands fidgeting. It wasn't a side of her she talked about much. On the run, how she'd been too scared of the people chasing her to make sure she had enough to eat, and her metabolism made that hard to begin with. How Sana had saved her.
She looks at Bruce, trying to gauge his reaction, but he's hard for her to read, so instead she looks to the door that empties into the alley, already knowing how this goes. She feels like she should say something, but they both know how exposed she is here. Words can't negate that.]
no subject
Ava doesn't quite know what night this is, at first. It's the alley behind the soup kitchen, and Sana and she used to climb the fire escape and talk, watching and listening to the city. It's admittedly not a particularly attractive place. There's an overstuffed dumpster, the paint on the fire escape is peeling and it's rusted in places, there are rats, skittering and screeching.
And there's a girl. She's in the rain without a coat, curled up on the ground against the dumpster. She's painfully thin, brown eyes flat and dull, red hair wet with the rain, and there's a duffle bag that she holds onto like a lifeline. Scrawny, starved, desperate and like exhaustion was wearing on the last shred of herself. The rats scuttle around her in the dark, hard to see save for the way their small bodies make the shadows shift.
One look at her younger self, and Ava knows exactly what night this is. She stands there, a little awkwardly, hands fidgeting. It wasn't a side of her she talked about much. On the run, how she'd been too scared of the people chasing her to make sure she had enough to eat, and her metabolism made that hard to begin with. How Sana had saved her.
She looks at Bruce, trying to gauge his reaction, but he's hard for her to read, so instead she looks to the door that empties into the alley, already knowing how this goes. She feels like she should say something, but they both know how exposed she is here. Words can't negate that.]