#just... casually avoids mentioning Scamp by name because I don't know what his human name would be xD

[outoftheirdifferences]

@streetslost​​, discussed starter

This was... new. To her, at least.

Oh, Angel had known that places like this existed, of course. Soup kitchens and the like, places for those who lived rough from day to day to drop by and get a hot meal and a little kindness. She’d seen them from afar, many times, while travelling the country with the gang in Buster’s beat-up old van; but Buster had always sneered at them, as he had at any prospect of needing outside help to get by. They may have been homeless, he would insist, but they were the toughest of the tough; and anyone who dared admit to not being able to get by on their own strength alone would be out of the gang faster than they could blink. Angel had seen it happen to others more than once...

So, she had kept her own head down - not hard to do when she was a naturally short girl - and pretended that none of the bothered her, just so that she wouldn’t be kicked out next.

Of course... that was the past.

The gang was no longer in her life. Buster was no longer in her life... and what an incredible relief that was. Even a few weeks ago, Angel knew, the prospect of having lost yet another family - even as awful of one as the gang was - would have set her fear of abandonment flaring terribly; the only reason she had, in the end, been able to turn her back on them was because she’d found something better.

Someone who she genuinely cared for more than herself, and who cared for her in return; who had showed her, even without deliberately meaning to, what a family should be like. Someone who had, after everything had gone down, taken her by the hand and led her away from the gang and the junkyard that had been the last place they’d crashed in. Someone who’d taken her to his home--

And that had been the point at which Angel had pulled away. Even with all that had happened... she couldn’t, she dared not try for another family. She didn’t have it in her to take another heartbreak - and besides, his parents had four kids already, they wouldn’t want another - so while she had promised her new friend that she would keep in contact, and would seek him out if she really needed help... she had then slipped away into the early morning shadows, returning to the life she knew.

More or less. As just noted, she now was completely free to appreciate the help that places like this offered to those in her shoes; and even for all her pride as a career street girl, Angel wasn’t above taking advantage of the offer every now and then - especially on a cold day like today.

Even still, though, she felt a little out of place. She could at least manage on her own, and that made her better off, by her own passing assessment, than half the other people being helped here... but free food was free food, and not having to steal it was always a bonus. All the same, as waited in line to be served, Angel drew her jacket collar further up around her neck, not quite able to keep from casting a wary eye around, just in case she saw anyone who looked to be deciding that she didn’t belong here.

And it was in the process of doing this that her grey-blue gaze landed on a familiar face in the crowd, and Angel forced herself to do a double-take. It couldn’t be, could it? She thought for sure that the girl who went by Cat had vanished from the streets several months back...?