* CLOSED STARTER › san francisco, california , mid - afternon , eleven years ago . / flashback ft. @unmak1ngs .
" DARK WERE THE DAYS OF HER FIRST GATES, yet nothing as dark and hideous as the one she had to face a year into her life as a hunter. a gate opened in san fran, so massive they need us there, her rescuer shared in a rush, throwing clothes and weapons into a bag, stoically denying her the minute she asked if she could go. however, san francisco was her city, hence against all advice, she went regardless, hiding the smirk tugging at her lips when her mentor’s protests fell silent in the face of her obstinacy. but it wasn't just any portal the one so recently opened, she came to realize, and its location wasn’t either. the moment she caught sight of the bright, colorful park in the corner, right where she spent endless afternoons swinging along with the breeze coming from the shore during her childhood, panic seared through her, turning her blood to ice .
that was the first time flashbacks of them plagued her senses, making her reckless, acting on pure instinct as her legs carried her to the only target in mind, the sharp call of her rescuer muffled under the ring in her ears. not her, please, she begged. to who ? she couldn’t tell. still, she did. she prayed — not zoya, everyone but zoya. and somehow her prayers were listened to, though not without despair, not without loss, because who was aurora osbourne without them ?
her mind was a fog as she reached her, as her shurikens flew from her hands, as her dagger sliced across the red fur of the jackal that had left her best friend an orphan. her heart squeezed in her chest when the job was done, memories of it forever lost in the haze of her clogged mind. “ come on, baby, let’s go, ” she whispered, hand carefully reaching zoya’s elbow, not a single plan on the horizon except taking her away from there, from the gate, from the street that would never be a home to any of them ever again. “ we have to leave, it’s gonna be okay. trust me, zo, it will. ” the awakening, the loss, the grief. any of it never got better, at least not in her experience, yet one survived anyway .
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