#anyway i’m so angry for bailey people are so awful grow up and have some fucking AGENCY

[marisatomay]

“you don’t owe anyone anything” actually you owe everyone everything!!! you OWE your table server and your coworkers and the elderly person you pass on the street and the dog on its walk and the child toddling along in the park and the driver trying to merge next to you and the pregnant person standing on public transport KINDNESS in return for theirs!! the connections we build are what give life meaning!!!

[ourlastbastion]

Embers Ch. 6

I’m terrible at remembering to post these

AO3 FFNet

“She wasn’t the most extroverted student I’ve had,” Mr. Rayner said as he led Soul and Maka through the halls of the school. According to the files they had received, this was where Amanda had been attending prior to being abducted, and Mr. Rayner had been the lead teacher for her class during the year she went missing.

He seemed a pleasant enough man. Tall, his dark hair combed back, a pair of dark-rimmed glasses framing his face. He dressed in a simple suit and carried a stack of carefully organized papers under one arm as he walked. He was polite to everyone they had passed; the students seemed to respect him, and from the glimpse they got of the tail-end of his last lecture, he was very intelligent.

All in all, Mr. Rayner seemed like a model teacher in appearance and in behavior.

Moving aside to let a group of kids by in their blue school uniforms, Mr. Rayner shook his head. “She kept to herself, was rather quiet, and she was frequently absent from class. On the days she did attend class, well, she often wound up in some form of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Soul asked.

“Well, the kind of trouble you’d expect,” Mr. Rayner shrugged. “Sometimes she was disrupting the classroom, she’d get into altercations, or she’d sleep in class.”

Maka wrote that down on the notebook she had brought, looking to Soul, sharing a look with him, a knowing glance. More kids rushed past them, eager to get home, to get to practice, or to hang out with their friends. “Did she ever come to class with… bruises? Bandages?” she asked, watching Mr. Rayner carefully for a reaction, not just in his body language, but his soul as well. “Did she ever come to class injured?”

There was a pause, “She sometimes got roughed up when things with the other kids got out of hand,” he said. “Kids being kids, impulsive and acting out.”

His words sounded honest, his face genuine—his soul was different. Maka saw it. When she asked him, she saw his soul’s wavelength flicker and shift, radiating a nervous energy to it—he was lying. Had he been talking to anyone else, he would have been lying convincingly, but Maka wasn’t anyone else. She could see his soul, and his soul was not something he could control like his voice or expressions.

She looked to Soul again, gave him a small nod.

“Look, teach,” Soul said, stepping forward, raising his lips a little as he spoke so that Mr. Rayner could see the sharp points to his teeth. Maka felt his soul flinch. “We don’t want to cause trouble, but we know that’s not true. I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by lying, but it won’t do you any good.”

Mr. Rayner looked between the two, clearly reevaluation his standing with them. Maka could see the sweat trickling along his neck. “Well… yes… she did come frequently covered in bruises. Her parents, they informed us that due to a medical condition, she would bruise quite easily from even the lightest bumps or trips”

“And you believed it?” Soul asked.

The teacher glared at him, but his fear was evident. “Look, we didn’t have proof to say otherwise, and Amanda wouldn’t speak of any sort of abuse,” he said, desperately trying to defend himself. “We can’t go around accusing every parent we see of abuse just because their kids sported a few bruises!”

“So you chose to ignore what you saw and hoped it went away, didn’t want it to be your problem,” Maka surmised, feeling disgust deep inside of herself. “What about the other kids? Surely they noticed.”

He scowled, looked away, “They just saw her state as a reason to ostracize her. I’d often come into class to find her cleaning graffiti off her desk left by the other kids.” He said. “She was bullied frequently.”

“And you did nothing,” Soul crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’m their teacher, not their warden. They never did anything extreme, so I left it alone knowing they’d grow bored with her and stop on their own.”

This man was disgusting.

Maka frowned. How could people like this be teachers? How could people be so callous when it came to the suffering of others? “What about friends? Her mother told us she’d hang out with her friends, sometimes spend the night at their places. Do you think you could tell us who some of them are?” she asked. “We’d like to ask them questions if possible, see if they might have seen something.”

Soul stepped forward again, nodding his head. “Better yet, we need you to give use the names of everyone you had in your class that year.”

There was a moment where Mr. Rayner looked as though he was going to be defiant, to refuse their request. But it was only for a moment before he deflated like a bag of air, leaning against the lockers in defeat of a battle he hadn’t known he was a part of. “I’ll get you the names…”

Once the two had gotten the list of students who had attended his class the year Amanda had been abducted, the two had taken the car the police department loaned them and had gone to the elementary school to do the same with Anna’s teachers.

The results had yielded better results.

Her teacher, Ms. Cooper, a young, pudgy woman with a fierce temperament and a kind heart had informed them as soon as the two seated themselves across from her desk that she had suspected the Bailey kids were being abused. She had no proof as she couldn’t very well make the children strip to see the bruises, but she had been keeping an eye out, trying to find as much evidence as she could to bring to local authorities. She didn’t want to do it prematurely and risk making it worse, but now feared with one child missing, she had waited too long.

It was clear that Ms. Cooper cared much more about her students than Mr. Rayner had, and she was entirely willing to cooperate in whatever way she could, providing a comprehensive list of students in both Anna and Alex’s classes, a list of guardians for each of those children, as well as a list of reports the headmaster had of unknown individuals lurking around the property within the last six months. That one had been a very short two-pager, but still appreciated.

Anna had been a lively girl, always ready to help other students, playing with other kids, spending her recesses and lunch breaks with her brother. Unlike Amanda, who had been ostracized and abused by her peers, the whole class had loved Anna.

Well, they could mark ‘similar personalities’ off the list of possible additions to the victimology.

With a list of people to talk to and only so much daylight to work with, Soul and Maka had made the choice to split up to cover more ground. Maka would handle Amanda’s classmates. Soul would talk to Anna’s. With any luck, they’d find something.

That was how Maka found herself talking with two of the most annoying teenagers she had ever met.

Stacey and Mary were both fourteen, yet they dressed like they were nineteen and hitting the clubs. They were the last of the students that Maka had tracked down, and boy did Maka feel her brain cells dying with every word the two said.

“I still don’t get why you’re wasting your time talking with us and not hunting down the bad guys,” Mary said as she sipped her coffee, her attitude just absolutely awful, stuck-up, and snotty. “Like, all we did was go to school with the girl, it’s not like we knew her or anything.”

Stacey nodded her head in agreement, “Yeah. We spoke to her only when we had to, we’re not going to know what happened to her.”

Maka held her breath, wanting to sigh and smack her head against a brick wall. “I’ve talked with the rest of your classmates, and they all said that you two had a history of harassing her, on and off school property,” she said calmly, trying to keep professional.

Mary gasped, hand over her mouth, “That is such slander!” she yelled

“Yeah! We may have teased her now and then, but it’s not like we bullied her or anything!” Stacey added.

Oh, fun. They were going to deny it. “Please don’t pretend it’s not true,” Maka said, feeling her intelligence lowering even more as this conversation dragged on. “You can’t expect me to believe the entire class would lie about you bullying Amanda.”

Mary scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest while taking careful care to not spill her coffee. “I don’t get why it matters anymore, anyway. Amanda’s gone, it was two years ago. Live and let live, you know?”

“Yeah!” Stacey agreed.

The need to bang her head against a wall was increasing. “Look, I don’t care if you think you weren’t bullying her or not. I just need to know if you ever noticed any strange people watching you when you were with her outside of school,” Maka said, a bit sharper than she had intended, but it had gotten her point across.

The two girls flinched, shared a look, and looked ready to bolt.

“We never saw anything,” Mary insisted, standing her ground firmly.

“Well, there was that one guy,” Stacey had said at the same time.

Mary looked to her, a look of betrayal crossing her face. “Stacey!” she hissed.

Maka wanted to smile. Finally, they were getting somewhere. “What can you tell me about this guy?” she asked, looking to Stacey.

“It was no one important!” Mary said quickly, trying to do damage control. But, she was effectively ignored by her friend.

“Well, a lot of the times when we were with Amanda, I noticed there was always this guy watching us. He really stuck out to me because he carried a camera all the time, that and that his hair was blonde,” Stacey said, brining a finger to her chin as she thought back. “I thought he was stalking us, it was really creepy, but Mary said we should ignore him and he’ll go away—and he did just that, he went away!”

Maka nodded, already she had her notebook out and was jotting these down. “I see. And, when did you stop seeing him around town?”

The girl gave it some more thought, but it was Mary who spoke, rolling her eyes and giving an angry huff. “It was around the time Amanda went missing.”

“Your right! That is around when I stopped seeing him!”

Frowning, Maka wrote that down as well. “Do you think he might have something to do with her abduction?”

“Seems pretty hard not to be,” Mary snipped back.

Maka nodded her head again. “And, may I ask, why you never brought this to the police’s attention earlier?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Mary glared at Maka with all the fury a 14-year-old girl could possess, which is a lot. “Because I didn’t want us getting involved,” she snapped. “If we let it slip that we might have seen the kidnapper, we’re just making ourselves into targets, too! I have no intention of being kidnapped, thank you very much.”

That was a fair reason, a cowedly one, but she couldn’t blame her. Mary would have been twelve at the time, of course she wouldn’t want to get involved if she thought she was putting herself at risk.

“Okay. Okay. What else can you tell me about what he looked like?” She asked instead, veering the topic somewhere else. “Anything else that stuck out beside the camera and fair?”

Stacey raised her hand. “He always was dressed in dark colors, and in like, jeans and hoodies,” she offered. “No matter the weather, that’s what he always dressed in, and we had been seeing him for months, so it’s like, ew, gross don’t you have any other clothes?”

“It wasn’t like he was close, either,” Mary added, still bitter, still angry. “He was always a bit away, so we never got a good look at him.”

“Understandable,” with that, Maka closed her notebook and handed them a card from her pocket. “You two have been big helps. If you remember anything else that you think might be important, please don’t hesitate to call.”

Rolling her eyes, Mary took the card and slipped it into her bra. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

Maka forced herself to keep smiling as she bid the two teens goodbye and going on her way. She had to find Soul, let him know what she had found. They had a description of what one kidnapper looked like—this was big.

~~~~~

“They were both enormous men,” the shopkeeper’s son said as he leaned against his broom in a lazy slouch. “One of them had one of those, like, buzz cuts. You know, the ones you see in military movies? They were also both pretty buff,” he added offhandedly, a yawn cutting through his description.

Soul nodded, “And you’ve been seeing them both around this area for a while now?”

The teen nodded, “A few times a week. They wouldn’t go into any of the shops or buy anything. They’d just stand outside their car and smoke. People watch. Talk. They’d do that for a few hours and then leave. They’d point at kids and talk among themselves—it was kind of creepy. I saw them following a girl around the area one day, so I just started walking with her as she did her errands, walked her home too. Forced the creeps to back off.”

“That was a good thing of you to do,” Soul praised, earning an embarrassed smile from the guy. Todd,  he corrected as he glanced at the nametag. “Anything else you can tell me about them?”

Todd scratched the back of his neck, “Well, they drove an SUV, it was dark in color, so it didn’t stand out too much, and, ah, I think the plates were from out of town.”

“That’s good, that’s great. You wouldn’t happen to remember the plate number, would you?”

To that, Todd shook his head. “Sorry, dude. I can barely remember the plates on my dads car, let alone some strangers,” he apologized, and then shook his head, “Though, there was one thing. I noticed one day that one of them had a tattoo on his right arm. I don’t know what it was, but it kind of looked like one of those Asian things.”

“Would you be able to draw it out for us?”

Todd once again shook his head. “They all look the same to me. A bunch of lines mushed together, sorry.”

Soul nodded and was about to ask something else when he noticed Maka running towards him. Turning his attention back to Todd, he smiled. “Look, you’ve been a tremendous help, thank you,” he said, reaching into his pocket as he saw Todd give another sheepish smile. “If you think of anything that might help us, if you see them again, or any other suspicious individual who catches your attention, call me and I’ll be down here as soon as I can,” he said, giving Todd his card.

“Thanks, dude,” Todd said, looking at the card and sliding it into his pocket. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled, not gonna let them get away with this,” he said, heading back into the shop to finish up his chores.

Watching him go, Soul waited until the door shut before turning towards Maka, just in time for her to slide to a stop in front of him, out of breath and panting.

“Soul…I…. I got… something…” she said between breaths, bending over as she struggled to breathe.

Soul chuckled, patted her on the back. “Let’s let you get some water and breath, fist,” he said in amusement. “I’ve got some information, too.”

And so, he had led her to a bench, left her there to buy some bottles of water, and waited until she had caught her breath and drank her water before letting them talk. Who knew how far she had run or for how long to find him, and he wanted to tell her she had been dumb and over eager to just start running to him rather than calling him. But she wouldn’t have been Maka otherwise.

It was a good ten minutes before they actually started anything.

“Amanda was being stalked months prior to being abducted,” Maka said, looking at her notes. Soul raised a brow. “Two of her former bullies said they saw the same man watching on numerous occasions when they were with her, and that he had vanished along the same time Amanda had.”

Soul hummed. “I’m hoping they were able to give you something to go off of for what he looked like.”

“They did,” she confirmed. “He had blonde, always dressed in the same dark hoodie with jeans, and carried with him a camera.” She paused, looked at her paper, and shook her head, “The only thing that can narrow anything down is the blonde hair, and he could have easily dyed it to a different color after snatching her.”

“He could have.”

“But it’s more than what we had earlier today!”

Soul smiled, nodded his head, “It is,” he agreed. “Even if it’s been two years, we’re bound to find something out from what you were able to find.”

Laughing, Maka nodded her head, leaning back against the bench as she laid her hands across the notebook in her lap, “What about you? You said you had found something out, too.”

“Ah, yeah. One of the shopkeepers kids had noticed a pair of dudes who had been hanging around the area for a couple of months,” he said, opening up his own notebook to scour the notes he had written. “They showed up about three months ago, and about three days a week they would stand outside and just watch people for a few hours before leaving. At one time, they started following some kid, so the guy joined the girl and helped her with her errands so the two would be forced to go away.”

“That’s pretty suspicious,” Maka frowned.

“Yeah, it is. Apparently he hasn’t seen them since Anna went missing, but, we don’t know for sure if they’re still in the area or not. He’s gonna keep an eye out, and if they show up, he’ll let us know.”

“I’m hoping you got some descriptions, too.”

Soul nodded, and handed his notebook over to her, rattling off the traits that Todd had told him. Big, adult, muscular. One had a buzzcut. One had a tattoo. Around their thirties. Drove an SUV. So far, he did have more to go off of than Maka did, and he had the advantage of it being so recent the men might still be in the area. That meant they had a higher chance of catching one of them.

Between their there suspects, Soul felt like they had begun making good ground.

“Let’s get a hold of the detective,” Maka decided, stretching her arms above her head.

It was getting late, Soul noted, they had spent hours going around Pocklington to go through their lists of people, and now the sun was setting. It would be night soon, and tomorrow would be another day spent investigating. Such was the life. “Let’s hope the old man hasn’t called it a night yet.”

Maka chuckled, swatting him on the arm. “He’s not too much older than us, so if he’s old, what’s that make us?”

“Not as old.”

She laughed again, and Soul smiled.

~~~~~~

The music of the bar was loud, but even the various rock and pop songs playing on the speakers couldn’t get the Disney songs out of Haruto’s head.  Between every order, verses from ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ or the song those Siamese cats sang would play in his mind, the songs switching between being sung by Bea or by the actual vocals.

Needless to say, Bea had fun with the two movies they had watched earlier, and thus Haruto would say movie day had been a success.

“She certainly had plenty of fun,” Mara agreed as she sat at the counter where Haruto was working.

Haruto hummed, passing a freshly made Dark & Stormy to a customer. “That was the whole point of doin’ it, if I ‘member right,” he said with a healthy amount of snark. “She had fun an’ that’s all that matters.”

Mara smiled, placing one hand on her chin. “You know? I will never not be surprised by how well you clean up. You certainly look good dressed nice.”

Frowning behind his mask, Haruto looked down at himself—he had changed his clothes, of course, and was dressed in the long sleeve dress shirt and black vest that was the uniform of the bar. Of course, he wasn’t without his mask and gloves. Not even a uniform would make him forgo those. But, even then, he didn’t quite get how he looked any better than he did before.

“Yer a weird one.”

Mara smiled and laughed. “Moving on. Come on, Mr. Bartender, come and fix me up a daiquiri.”

Snorting, Haruto moved to instead start working on a rum & cola. “Pretty sure ya aint old ‘nuff.”

She gasped in full offense, moving to almost rise from her seat in a fury. “How dare you! I am older than you, boy! Don’t take me for some child!” she yelled.

“Then don’t act like one when ya get riled,” he retorted, passing the drink on and moving onto another customers. “Still, ya don’t have an I.D. on ya to confirm yer age, so I can’t sell to ya.”

She scowled, but said no more on the topic, instead favoring to turn in her seat and watch the people moving, dancing, and talking. She hummed, watching.

Haruto did his best to ignore her as he continued to work. A couple of Miller Lite twist-off to the two over there, cans of Budweiser to the partiers. Some Hurricanes, a sidecar, a paloma, a few shots of vodka, a whiskey sour. He continued to move, continued to mix and take, his actions robotic, rehearsed.

It was monotonous work, really. Mindlessly making the recipes he knew by heart, making a few short-word responses

He hated it here, that went without saying.  The people were too loud, too friendly, and too obnoxious. Then, once they got a few drinks in their systems, they were unbearable. The only saving grace was that they tipped well.

And, well, Haruto wasn’t going to frown at money. Life wasn’t cheap, two lives were more expensive.

“Well! My, my, my, my!”

And with that, Haruto frowned. Well, scowled, really. He looked up from the cosmo he was making to sigh and glare at the approaching newcomers.

Mara hid a smile behind a hand, chuckling a little. “Well, isn’t this a fun surprise.”

Collapsing into a seat beside Mara was his brother. He was a tall man, taller than Haruto, thinner, and dressed similarly, though his clothes much darker. His eyes were black as opposed to Haruto’s green, and there were hints of red in his dark hair. What marked him different from Haruto, what truly marked him as different, was the unnatural grin that stretched from ear to ear, an expression Haruto rarely saw leave.

Beside him was an older man who was a few inches taller than his brother, a white man with black hair and a scruffy beard forming around his face. He was stockier, dressed in a black tee and jeans, and had the years of anger and exhaustion painted on his face.

“Ichiro,” Haruto greeted curtly, and then looked to his companion. “Caleb.”

The man raised a hand. “Hey.”

“And I see Mara is here, too!” Ichiro said with glee as Mara waved at him, “Why, we just need Rosie and Astra and it’ll be like a family reunion!”

Haruto scowled, “let’s not. What can I getcha,” he asked, ignoring Mara’s whine of indignation.

“Whiskey sour, my dear brother!”

“Beer,” Caleb said.

Haruto nodded and began grabbing the drinks, handing them over within a minute.  “Wasn’t expectin’ ya to show up so soon,” he said, giving his brother a pointed glare. “Usually when ya give someone an advance warnin’, ya give em time to prepare.”

Waving his hand, Ichiro laughed, it was loud and obnoxious. “Why! Where is the fun if I let you get yourself all gussied up?” he asked, and when Haruto handed the drinks to them, he took a savoring sip of his whiskey sour. “Besides, I would think you’d enjoy your dear big brother coming down to visit.”

“Why would I enjoy it? I hate ya.”

Caleb raised a brow at Haruto’s words, taking a gulp of his beer and letting the bottle clink loudly against the counter. “That’s pretty harsh.”

“Don’t care,” Haruto muttered, taking some dirty glasses to the tub under the counter so it could be sent back to the kitchen later for cleaning. “Just drink an’ get lost, both of ya.”

Ichiro laughed, “You should be nicer to your customers, little brother.”

“He raises a good point,” Mara added, earning a ‘See! Dear Mara here agrees!’ from the man, “You’re going to get in trouble if you swear at your customers.”

“Fuck off.”

With his ever present grin, Ichiro remained silent as he sipped and watched, even Caleb was quiet—but Caleb didn’t talk much anyways so that wasn’t a surprise. Mara even resumed a contemplative silence. If it wasn’t for the fact that he knew the three, he would have said it was becoming downright peaceful, but he doubted the word was even a possibility when Ichiro was in their midst. It was always just a matter of time.

Twenty minutes had passed where Haruto made drinks for increasingly intoxicated men and women before that silence eventually was broken by his brother, as Haruto had expected.

He had been in the middle of making a nigroni when Ichiro chuckled and pointed at Haruto’s head. “You’ll need to fix yourself up, soon,” he said in a teasing tone, waving his finger around in the air. “Your roots are showing.

Instinctively, Haruto reached to touch his scalp, stopping before touching his hair. Scowling behind his mask, Haruto finished the drink and passed it down the counter, “Fuck,” he muttered. “The dye never stays fer long. It’s startin’ to piss me off.”

Ichiro chuckled, though Mara frowned in concern. “It’s not too noticeable, but it is rather frustrating that you have to re-dye it frequently, when Ichiro just needs to do it once and leave it alone.”

“I’m special, my dear, simple as that.”

Haruto grumbled, glaring at his brother and at Mara both before moving to fix up more drinks. More people were coming into the bar now, so he needed to keep his attention focused.

“Hey, kid,” he scowled, glanced at Caleb. “If you’re done being a damn weirdo, get me another beer.”

Haruto did that, grabbing the bottle and sliding it over to him with a glare, “There ya fuckin’ go,” he said, earning a nod of approval from his customer.

He left it at that. Caleb drinking in silence, nursing his beer like a baby at their mothers teat, while Mara and Ichiro chatted, catching up on old times. It had been months since either had seen the other properly, they had much to say, no doubt about it, and Haruto thought it better like this. That meant the other three were off in their own worlds and would leave him the fuck alone so he could attend to his other customers.

And he did just that. Serving drinks, taking orders, collecting payment. The usual bartending crap that he got minimum pay for.

He would have once again said it was becoming peaceful, but that was just going to bring bad luck—and bring bad luck it did.

“There you are!”

Haruto stiffened when he heard Maka approaching the counter. Thankfully, her attention was on someone else and not him, she didn’t even seem to notice him as she and her partner walked past. He looked past them and—sure enough that damn detective was sitting at the far end of the counter. Oh fucking Hell.

They talked, voices hushed. Haruto could hear them if he tried, but he didn’t bother. As on edge as he suddenly felt himself to be, he didn’t want to get involved, not in any way or form. He tried to not be noticed, tried to ignore and be ignored as he wiped the glasses and made his way to the other side of the counter where his own group was seated.

“Ah, so they’re here,” Mara hummed, and Ichiro was watching with a smile, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

Haruto looked to Caleb. “DWMA,” he said.

The man downed the rest of his drink. “In that case, fuck this, I’m getting out of here,” he said, standing up from his seat. An understandable response, Haruto would run if he could, too. But, he couldn’t. “You shoulda told me there were fucking meisters and weapons here.”

Ichiro shrugged, “It must have slipped my mind,” and made no move to get up, though both he, and even Mara, would be in similar danger if they were found. They just did not fear the academy as Caleb did.

Frowning, Haruto shook his head, “Would have if I knew ya were comin’.”

Face softening just a bit, Caleb reached over to lightly hit Haruto’s shoulder with a fist. “You be careful, kid. Even though I’m hightailing it out of here, if things go south I can be right back in here at first notice if you need me.”

That got something of a smile from Haruto, though it went unseen. “Yeah, yeah. Get yer ass out of here, ya drunk.”

He watched as Caleb lumbered through the crowds, heading out the front doors of the club. He watched his silhouette in the windows as he moved and vanished. Caleb was gone, out of the club, safer now that he was away from the two DWMA lackeys. The same couldn’t be said for Haruto, though.

Turning around to see if others needed more drinks, he saw the woman staring at him with such intensity that he knew she was looking at his soul.

His scowl returned.

“Hey, boss,” he said, throwing his towel off to one of the bins under the counter, already walking away, “I’m taking my break.” He didn’t wait for a response.

[rylie-barton]

trigger warnings: talk of death, injuries, blood & tbh a huge rylie barton tw

unsteady | but if you love me, don’t let go.

9:58am. Emergency services, finally, broke through the rubble that had been holding the ballroom doors closed. Much like when the earthquake itself had started, students began to stampede towards the doors the minute they were swung open, clambering over the chunks of ceiling, support beams, and general wreckage without a second thought in their haste to escape. 

The people who didn’t join the rush to get outside where they could tearfully reunite with friends and family and be lead off to ambulances by EMT’s, were the ones left to help the injured out - Rylie was one of many, her arm wrapped around an unfamiliar boys waist as she helped him hobble towards the doors. His teeth were gritted from the pain of his leg, crushed beneath a beam, and she was just exhausted. Conversation was, safe to say, a no-go, but neither of them seemed particularly keen on making any, anyway, the silence much preferred. Helping him over the threshold, Rylie’s eyes darted around the foyer, filled with fellow students and unfamiliar adults who, she assumed, were there to find their kids. Dispersed out in the crowd were the people she was looking for - suited and booted EMT’s, one of which Rylie flagged down when they were a few feet from her. 

“He needs to be in one of the ambulances,” she’d said, voice more quiet than she had intended. The older woman had heard and nodded, solemnly, wrapping her arm around the other student on his other side. When she was confident that his weight was supported, Rylie ducked out from beneath his arm, about to say thanks and rush off once again when the EMT had called - “You’ll need to get to one too, Miss-”

“I’m fine. Thanks, but...-” but nothing. It wasn’t like she was wrong. Rylie was a mess of bruises and blood that was mostly her own, and every step was like she was walking through some kinda viscous fluid. It wasn’t just tiredness weighing her own, but hurt, too - leaving, however, and letting other students pick up the slack... wasn’t an option.  A long second ticked by and when nothing else came to her to say, Rylie simply shrugged, waving the woman off and heading back into the ballroom before she could be stopped. 

Over the next while, however long it was, she just zoned out. A switch flipped, almost like she was going into work mode, and all she thought about was putting one foot in front of the other and helping more severely injured fellow students get out. There was no need for small talk and when there was, it was minimal - they were led off to ambulances and the on site nurses station before she needed to really get to know them,  and it was maybe that she didn’t happen to know everyone she was helping that made it so easy for her to just tune out of all that was going on.

One student became two, two became four, four grew into even more, and before she knew it, the hall was almost emptied thanks to the efforts of everyone who’d pulled together to help. As she’d continued working, more and more of the original group had disappeared into the ever growing crowd of relatives and friends outside, she assumed to find their own loved ones. They were replaced by people in and out of uniforms, one of whom stopped her, eventually, on her way back into the hall and told her she should go. “I’m an agent of SHIELD,” it’d been true, once, but now it was a lie that fell easily from her lips, “I want to help.” 

Someone nearby had stopped what they were doing. “There’s another one of those outside,” he’d said, “A SHIELD agent, I mean. He’s looking for someone-”

On it’s own, the idea of another (see: only) SHIELD agent being at the school wasn’t an altogether outlandish one. Rylie imagined that there’d be plenty of them cropping up for the next few weeks, as everyone tried to establish what had happened - but it seemed like too much of a coincidence. It gave her a kind of hope, and though her legs protested and her head thumped painfully with each footfall, Rylie had turned on her heel and rushed from the ballroom, into the crowd outside that she had been avoiding so well. 

Maybe it was Troy. Maybe it was Dan - maybe it was a stranger, but, she’d have to find out. 

In the aftermath of the quake, she had never felt more alone. The guys weren’t there. Wesley and Bailey had been inside with her, Alex was Alex, and her parents... she’d pushed them away, months ago. She and Natasha hadn’t spoken since before Christmas. She and Clint - well, after the argument they’d had after she’d been hospitalized during the New Year, it wasn’t much of a surprise they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in close to six months. She just didn’t expect them. Every time she’d lead another student out of the hall she’d caught glimpses of tearful family reunions and felt a pang because she was all alone, but now... if anyone was going to turn up and look for her, it’d be one of her brothers, right? 

The search lasted mere minutes. 

The shock, a while longer.

She’d given the foyer one glance and established that no one was there that she knew, and was heading towards the front doors when her wrist was caught and she was pulled to a stop. 

She had turned and there, in the flesh, was Clint Barton. He looked like she felt - his face was drawn and pale, the worry in his gaze evident.

The last time she’d seen him, he had been slamming the door behind him as he’d left her dorm. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself, Rylie, he’d said, and that had been the last of the argument she’d caused. When he had tried to call over the following months, she had let the phone ring out, first because she was still seething in her stupid anger - and then, because she didn’t know what to say to him. Years worth of lies had caught up to her and Clint, she felt, had only been doing what any father would do if they found out their daughter was an alcoholic - he’d just wanted to help by bringing her home. But she’d gotten angry, she had shouted and been more disrespectful to him than she’d ever been before in her life... and no amount of words would make up for what she’d said, or begin to mend the harm she’d caused throughout years of lying to him. They had been close, once, but ever since Phoebe their bond had been under tremendous amounts of strain - that was all it had taken to tear it, finally, asunder. 

But there he was. Everything for the time being, at least, forgotten, her dad pulled her into a bone crushing hug that lasted seconds before he was holding her tight by each shoulder and studying her, trying to gauge the seriousness of her injuries. After all - she wasn’t looking all that great, but they both knew that didn’t mean serious. Serious was an arm falling off. 

“Are you okay?" Gingerly, he touched the right side of her face, as if he were checking that all the blood concentrated there was dry. 

I’m fine, was, of course, the first thought to go through her mind. I’m fine, dad. Just a little battered, but, everything is fine - I’m fine.

Lies like that, said every time something happened, had torn them apart. They had continued to build until they all came out in the same, awful argument, and if she’d just said the truth even one more time than she had, maybe she wouldn’t have been without her dad for months. 

"No,” all of a sudden, she was very aware that her hearing was one sided. More aware than she had let herself be all night, in fact. Ever since she had struggled out from beneath the chandelier branch and gotten shakily to her feet, Rylie had been putting the emptiness on her right side to the back of her mind - not in denial, exactly, but intent on ignoring it until she couldn’t anymore, but now... now she couldn’t. The earlier ringing had died completely down and was replaced with eerie silence, and Rylie’s resolve absolutely crumbled then and there, her lip quivering and her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t hear, Pops. It-- I can’t--” She gestured wildly in the direction of her right ear, and then before she could stop herself she was sobbing and her dad was wrapping his arms around her, again, pulling her in tight to his chest and holding her there. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay-” pressing his cheek against the top of her head and closing his eyes, it wasn’t until much later that Rylie would realize that she hadn’t been the only crying, and the trembling wasn’t all her own. “It’s okay, baby. I promise - it’s okay.”

It had been a very long time since Clint and Rylie Barton had been on the same page. Even longer, really, since it had felt they were even reading from the same book - 

But now, in the worst of ways, they had been thrown back together.