Sterling hadn’t been able to find decent enough booze to really plaster himself for the remainder of the week. He had managed to spend enough of the time in a bitter haze though, so that suited him well enough, even though the gun manager kicked him out so that she could go eat and he was told that he wasn’t to come back again that day, under any circumstances. He’d opted not to push Scott on the matter by breaking in, because while yes, solitary might be an option that would solve some problems, he was really bad at dealing with that kind of authority too.
So, with the order to not come back to the gun range today, having opted off training because fuck that noise, unless he was getting his powers, Scott could track him down to get his ass kicked in hand-to-hand, Sterling was at odds. The shop clerk had already explained that the booze wasn’t due in until later and Sterling had made sure there was at least two bottles with his name on it -or he’d be robbing a redhead.
He wasn’t allowed to threaten anyone with utensils or he’d probably end up with double feature sessions with Dr Russel, and no thank you on that one, least of all now. Ending up in the so called leisure room with an old fashioned game boy and tetris wasn’t really what he expected, but he had hoped it would be enough to keep his mind occupied and avoid enough people.
And one person specifically. He didn’t think it was too big a coincidence. Names weren’t that common, least of all both names, and if Susan Wright wasn’t the one he was thinking it was, then fine, he’d move the fuck on and not mention it. But he didn’t think he was that lucky and his life was a shit show enough right now without dealing with that.
Avoidance was always better.
Susan was restless, but that was to be expected, she was a speedster first and foremost so always had an excess of energy. Not helped by the fact she was having to face the world on what to her felt like rewind or pause at times and she felt like she was climbing the walls. She was also eating way too much because without her super speed she didn’t know if she still had the same metabolic rate to burn off the fat she could only imagine was migrating to her thighs.
She’d had a tour and thank God for that because otherwise she probably would have gotten lost as she hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention to where her aimless wandering had taken her. As luck would have it she had ended up in the leisure room, the one place she hadn’t really explored though as she strayed into it she was aware that she wasn’t alone.
Not that she looked, the person whoever they were, were sitting in this place on their own on purpose and she wasn’t about to go crashing in on them. She trailed a hand over the edge of the nearby foosball table before she popped a cherry flavoured bubble and drew it back in so she could continue chewing. It sure as hell beat out having a sore jaw and subsequent headache from biting back and grinding her teeth at some of the sheer stupidity this place exhibited on a daily basis.
“Christ,” she muttered to herself as a glance at a nearby clock revealed that only a minute had passed since well had felt like forever to her. “I will literally go insane at this rate.” Susan trailed over to what looked like an old connect four and ducked down to watch the yellow circular disc vanish into the slot of her choosing.
There were times that Sterling really hated the world, like with the burning passion of someone who was routinely dealt shitty hands and had to find some way to make it work. He never really got the point of feeling sorry for yourself, and his attitude tended to be that of a fatalist pessimist, because if something shit could happen, it likely would happen. And so far that really helped Sterling keep his expectations low.
But other times, other times it felt like the world was fucking with him and he really should’ve just stayed in his damn cell and not bothered about innocent stupid nurses that actually treated him like a human rather than a dog on a leash. But fuck, he’d remember for next time.
He’d slouched lower into the sofa when someone’d walked him, his awareness of them and his constant need to at least pay half attention to someone else in the room, something that had stuck with him since foster care and never gone away but saved his neck a few times before, meant he died on the next level of the game. Instead of just leaving, which he fucking should’ve, he started it up again, even keeping that little thread of attention elsewhere.
Which meant, when she spoke to herself, he’d automatically answered, “Join the club.” Reflexes. He needed to get out of that, because then he might actually end up in conversations, and no one wanted that.
That voice. She knew that voice. It wasn’t possible however because the person who had that voice was long gone. Vanished into the night without so much as a trace of him left behind. And honestly she must really be going mad if she was hearing his voice after all this time, the same voice that had shared stories, whispered secrets, and said her name in worried tones when that jock had set upon her.
Yep, definitely going insane.
Either that or the lack of sleep was catching up with her.
“Nice to know that I’m not alone in that,” she replied, sinking a further disc into the connect four.
The rational thing would be to just ignore, grunt something and just stalk off, or simply stay put and just be quiet. He had lots of practice in doing that, staring at blank walls and waiting for the right opportunity for a kill, or just waiting for a target. Patience he had in spades.
But boredom was a killer and he had not learned entirely how to deal with that one. “Pretty sure half this damn place is nuts, and if they aren’t already, they’re gonna get there soon.” He was tempting fate, he knew he was. Because if he hadn’t been convinced by the name, he was convinced more so by her voice, the stature, inflections. It’d been a lifetime, maybe more so than that, but some things were etched into the brain.
Boredom was making him reckless too. “Have you seen who fills up this place?”
Susan may or may not have been leaning around the connect four to try and get a better look at the figure hunched over what was an old style gameboy because as much as the voice matched she needed to see him for herself to confirm her suspicions. Of course the chance of it being who she thought it was? Slim to none, but then anything was possible. She was probably squinting because that she thought in her infinite wisdom would somehow make seeing him so much clearer.
And she may have leaned a little too much and misjudged just how far left she was because sure enough there went her balance and then she was falling.
Aw crap.
The thump actually made him look up, because, “Well that was smooth.” Okay so he didn’t really have room to talk, but when the blast from the past could literally be twenty years previous and the exact same thing happening, even Sterling couldn’t keep his head down.
There was likely no way to avoid it anyway -short of murdering someone with a fork and being sent back amid the disappointed ‘what did I tell you’ from Dr Russel, but hey, that was always an option if it got too much later.
Putting the game boy down, after flicking it off because tetris wasn’t really a ‘save your progress’ game anyway, Sterling pushed himself up from the battered couch to stand just by where Susan ended up sprawled, “Want a hand?”
“You don’t think I am painfully aware of that?” Susan quipped from her less than flattering and not at all embarrassing sprawl on the ground. Ugh, what a great first impression, or second, third, hell she didn’t even know right now.
She lifted a hand and proceeded to wave it around in the air to indicate that yes she would appreciate some help.
Seriously.
“It couldn’t have been that painful, you’ve gotta be made of tougher stuff by now.” The waving hand was enough to have him rolling his eyes, grabbing her at the wrist to stop her just flailing. Really, it was redundant. “Stop, flailing.”
He should’ve just stayed in his room, made some darts out of cutlery and entertained himself. He was used to entertaining himself, but the allure of a freedom made him venture elsewhere and this was what it got him. Exactly what he was trying to avoid.
“C’mon, up.” It didn’t take a lot of tugging, but he was careful to be sure he didn’t yank her arm out of its socket -that was the hazard of being able to break numerous bones with little effort.
Now hauled back to her feet Susan levelled Sterling with a dark glare. “You don’t get to vanish out of my life and turn back up telling me I should be made of tougher stuff man.” She pulled her hand back. “And as a matter of fact I am not because in order to be super fast you need to have lighter bones and lighter bones means what? Oh, right, I get hurt easily.”
And she was embarrassed, painfully so.
She had imagined this reunion so many times that this was both disappointing and heartbreaking but Susan pushed past that. “Small world, apparently.”
Well, you disappear to avoid murder charges and everyone’s a critic. “I’ll remember that, next time I murder someone. Stick around, it’ll work out well.” Because even if Susan didn’t know, there was probably a hell of a lot of suspicion. He could’ve maybe worked it out, but her parents, god, her parents pulled one hell of a turn around that he wasn’t prepared to deal with that and suddenly having hot energy knives.
“Painfully so.” He hadn’t known she’d been a super when he left, hadn’t actually thought about it a lot afterwards -it was another lesson in disappointment, mostly because of her parents, but partially because nothing stuck.
“Are you okay?” Because no, that fall shouldn’t have hurt much, but if she didn’t have the bone density of most people, then yeah, fine, he’d ask. “Super speed?” But he couldn’t avoid the next question, with a sharp eyebrow raise.
“And the next time the cops come round to the house to ask me questions about what I did or didn’t see I’ll remember not to lie next time,” Susan bit out sharply before she folded her arms across her chest because honestly she needed something to hold onto right now and that was clearly not Sterling.
She pushed a heated breath out of her chest. “Fine,” she replied, not really wanting to give in and admit that she was a little sore on the side that had made contact with the floor. “And yes, super speed, along with a lot of other surprising powers which I kept hidden because you knew how my folks felt about supers.”
“Surprise number two,” she finally said with a lift of her eyebrows.
“You could’a told them.” He figured she’d been unconscious the whole time, honestly it hadn’t crossed his mind that she’d have anything to say to anyone about what happened. He’d left the moment he figured out her parents weren’t in the least bit interested in people if they were supers, supers weren’t people. Regardless of what could’ve happened, or why, their bias was painfully apparent.
“Yeah, that was made abundantly clear at exactly the right time.” Thank God? Maybe, he wasn’t sure if it was better or worse, he still ended up here after all.
“World of surprises. Aren’t you just full of them.” Given that she hid whatever surprising powers she had, and managed it fairly well, still to end up in this place, it sort of spoke that not everything went smoothly on the hiding things.
“Well, sorry, hadn’t been aware that selling your foster brother out to the cops was an okay thing to do.” Susan suddenly wished she was anywhere but here because honestly she’d had a rough couple months and this? Well, this was just the icing on the very shit-tastic cake.
She pushed a breath out of her chest and ignored the painful reminder of just how against everything she was her parents were, but that was the reason she’d left. She hadn’t been able to be herself and be around them, especially as she knew that eventually it would come out and she’d have to deal with that look of shame and disappointment. No thank you.
“Apparently so,” she returned with a shrug. “But I’ve crashed in on your lurking in the dark for long enough so I’ll let you get back to that.” Clearly it was important. Or whatever.
“Hadn’t been aware you were awake at all.” Foster brother. It made him sigh a little, because of all the things that had been shredded that day, the illusion of a family was probably the worst. He stopped trying to fit anything after that; family, friends, society. It was a farce, and the more you worked to be part of it, the less true it was.
“I almost told them.” Small truth, since it had taken him aback, learning that he had something so fundamentally dangerous under his skin, he’d been fine being able to blink in and out of sight, being invisible wasn’t dangerous. And he’d been so close to telling Ernie and Bianca what happened. “Until I heard them talking, and then I bailed.” Because if the cops hadn’t found their way to the house, they’d have been called if Sterling talked.
“Tetris waits for no man. Although my concentration is shot.” Not that you needed much for tetris.
“Well for all their good intentions they are still in fact small minded bigots who will eventually wake up and realise that they were in fact on the wrong side of history.” And that’s exactly how she felt especially as prior to her time in jail and now the Regiment she was a very passionate very active person in the pro-super fight.
That was until it had all gone wrong, very wrong.
“Yeah, well, wouldn’t want to keep you.” Susan shifted awkwardly before just giving him what she hoped was a convincing smile. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around given that we’re both stuck here.”
It was the truth. Her parents had been two of the best people he’d interacted with since his blood family -and even then they were a few notches above his memories of his mother, but they were still really closed minded when it came down to it.
Ultimately it had been the straw that broke the camel's back.
“Guess so,” didn’t need to mention that if he got his way he might be invisible the rest of his fucking life, because apparently the world was a cosmic joke and Sterling couldn’t even kill someone to feel better.
Susan swallowed hard and nodded her head, hating how tight her throat felt, and she could definitely feel a burning in her chest. She wasn’t going to cry. Not here. Not now. Nope. It was not happening.
“Yeah, see you around,” she managed in a tight voice and not for the first time since she’d been arrested she longed for her super speed because then walking away wouldn’t take so fucking long.
Breathe, Susie, just keep breathing.
Of course easier said than done though she did pause at the entrance to the leisure room and looked over her shoulder at him, just to make sure that he was real and she wasn’t imagining things.
Nope, definitely real. Honestly she didn’t know if that was better or worse than make believe.