#((i promise u im not trying to send u like 5 paragraphs every time but it somehow happens :skull:))

[roscvcins]

They NOTICED, she thinks, absently.

In the years that have passed, she has become the opposite of careless, but there's an obvious KNOWING - spelled out and exasperatingly undeniable. It's in the way she made it back in half the time that day, carefully scrubbed herself clean of the blood and smoke that wouldn't bother her on any other day, takes extra care to cover the metallic scent and conceal the cuts and bruises. The way she dresses purposely in the opposite way from when she goes on a job - more like the girls she has the time to watch, sometimes, in the plazas from her spot above, and different from the identities she wears like costumes.

She looks like - a PERSON, in these moments. A person with a life that is continuous, more than a role to play - a person with somewhere to go after she exits the stage, someone to go to, someone to be devoted to. And a person like that is harder - to control. It's because they've noticed, she guesses - that she sees him less - MUCH LESS, than they used to, than the days when they would be kept in the same room for long enough she began to wonder if they had been forgotten, if the world had ended in an instant outside, and they were the only ones left.

(But it's better this way, she thinks - this part can be her SECRET, tucked safe and sound away from him and from them.)

Hanzhu notices him first - she's watching, her gaze falling first upon his face and then scanning over the rest of him, the details committed to memory in that moment before she speaks. Then - she waves. "...Over here." The light refracts from warm brown eyes, soft and glistening. "...I got off early, so I came to see if I'd make it to pick you up."

@misericordiis liked for a starter!