This time of night, the L train is greasy yellow light and sticky patches of indeterminate colour. It's people who talk too loudly and fill up too much space and stare for too long. It's hardly worth the fare, for the ten minutes it's saving her. Rosario's place is close enough to the Evergreens, and far enough from train and bus stops, that she might as well just walk.
Be practical about it, though (and Rosario is always practical about it): there's just as many assholes on Bushwick Avenue. Just as many loud-talkers and cat-callers, manspreaders and oglers, and they a helluva lot bolder on a dark street corner than they are on a subway car full of witnesses. Girl goes walking alone in the middle of the night, everyone knows where that story's prone to end. Rosario was not inclined to tempt fate before, and nor is she now that Fate's out there trying to tempt her.
She takes the train. Ill Niño's in her ears, salsa beat and metal guitar and Spanish spat like wicked darts, and she mostly chose the track to drown out everyone around her, but she's feeling it a little tonight, a kinda thrumming in her veins. It's perfect music for stomping the pavement, except that walking at night with your earphones in is another iffy proposition, and anyway it goes just as well with the rattling momentum of the L.
It feels like a long time since she's had control of her own momentum. Not since New Year's— nah, since Halloween— since she doesn't remember when. She's been an unwilling passenger on a speedboat without a seatbelt or a set direction, skidding over choppy water, and even if she could reach the brakes she hasn't got a damn clue what they look like. Rosario's not built for the sea. She'll bitch about the subway as much as any born New Yorker, but she'll take solid steel tracks and sequential stops any time. More and more, she's missing the days when all her problems could be broken down methodically into tidy lists and put to bed with the decisive stroke of a pen.
Right now, though, right now she's moving only in one direction. Tonight is theirs, hers and Lyra's, no bullshit, no weird shit, just six-dollar wine and a box of donuts. Sure, there's still the niggling pressures of study and home and Apollo – there's still the looming Corvus-vision that she hasn't figured out yet – but all that'll wait for another day. Finals are over, summer's on the horizon and she's standing on familiar ground: the cemetery, the Moon, the two of them just hanging out, exactly like old times.
It's a good night for it, calm and clear. The warm air ruffles her hair as she exits the station. Her backpack's hanging low off one shoulder, weighed down with provisions. Her tee's slipping off the shoulder, too: soft slouchy black, emblazoned with the lunar surface in honour of the main event, plus faded jeans and a comfortably worn pair of boots, 'cause they're gonna be wandering round a cemetery at night. The muted colours blend with the shadowy street. Lyra's the opposite: Rosario spots her from half a block away, perched on top of the gate in that ridiculous turquoise coat, and the sight makes her break into a grin. Once she's within earshot, she calls out, "Ay yo, dontchu got no respect for the dead?"