Re: [Out: Gwen & Felicity]
Well this? Was unexpected. Felicity had never been part of the crowd at high school. Not after foster-care and jail sentences, even when the crowd was kind of nerdy and hung out in the library instead of places that took fake ID. She knew of crowds, through Harry who trailed girls like broken guitar-strings (God, if Harry brought broken hearts and the Little Lost Boy routine into town instead of a city where she didn't have to feel bad for all the girls because she didn't have to look at them, she was going to kill him) but she'd never been nestled close. They? Were bonded and Felicity didn't bond.
Still, the girl she'd known in college had been supernova smart, the kind of smart that didn't flunk out after late nights out running between the old houses that flanked the park and had safes built into walls. Felicity dug a hand past butter-soft leather to run two fingers along the worn page-edges of Steinbeck just to check they were still there. Still there, and she was still in college. Still, and scraping through the pre-reading and Gwen in front of her who she'd totally expected to be at Stanford by now or something, scarily advanced.
Instead? Cool sneakers and earbuds and a shirt that was so completely nerdy it was almost cute. Felicity smiled, and it was breezy-bright and completely oblivious to sad deaths and clone-resurrections. "For practically five minutes so far. Hi." Felicity's memory was Christmas-hazy, winter break and notes left on communal doors and she didn't know there was anything to mourn, so she reached out to hug, instead of welling up.
"Those shoes are amazing, but you've got to explain what you're doing here and not off inventing cures for cancer or whatever." She was hazy on the detail of what that involved, okay, but not that Gwen had been smart enough to be a baby genius. Life? Did not take baby geniuses and insert them into small towns. "Is your entire gang here?"