#was gonna make burgers tonight but i think i might just throw some ramen and veggies and eggs into a pot U_U

[autistic-shaiapouf]

I think it could be fun to save music without listening to it first, fun little surprise for myself later when I have no idea what it is but have no choice but to vibe

[luckyspike]

Adventures in America, Ch. 9 - Jackson County, Missouri

In which we learn about Rachael and Noel

Adam and Lucky bond over mutual interests that aren’t weather

And Aziraphale and Crowley share a soft moment at the edge of a corn field

Read the previous chapters here (not on AO3 yet!): ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 | ch 4 | ch 5 | ch 6 | ch 7 | ch 8

or just check out my fanfiction tag

-

The next day brought a trip to the great state of Missouri, and more tornadoes. Bigger, this time, longer-lived. Adam and Lucky watched with great enthusiasm as the powerlines flashed when the tornado tore through them, and then with dread as they watched the biggest tornado of the day lift a barn entirely up off the ground and hurl it, in pieces, hundreds of yards to either side. When the danger had passed, Rachael drove the truck toward the property, the students taking in the destruction as they drove past the bits of barn on the way up the farm road. Noel and Rachael led the way to the farmhouse, where they knocked on the door and checked on the homeowner and were assured that it was just hay in the barn, thanks for checking but we’re fine, appreciate the stop. 

“It should be a compulsory part of storm chasing,” Noel told the boys solemnly as they piled back into the truck. “Lots of chasers do it, and that’s great, but I’ve seen vans and trucks blow past a trashed building just to keep following the storm.” He shook his head. “No excuse for that, not really.”

There wasn’t as much lightning with that system, so Rachael didn’t bother throwing the probes out. After they checked on the farm house, they drove after the storm for a little while longer, but it fell apart near the capitol, and they called it a night. Noel was driving by then, and when the group decided a diner sounded just perfect for a quick bite before bed, he somehow managed to navigate to a greasy spoon on the side of the road that promised some of the best burgers in the midwest. Adam wasn’t typically a fan of burgers, but when faced with a claim like that, he felt it was fairly mandatory to at least give them a try.

They chatted idly about the storms of the day while the waited, Adam nursing a Pepsi and Lucky working on a black-and-white milkshake. “So what are we thinking about tomorrow?” Noel asked, over the rim of his coffee cup.

Rachael had the laptop out, and she didn’t look particularly happy. “Not … not looking good. Not for the next few days, as much as I can estimate.” She sighed. “I can look again in the morning, for sure, but if there’s anything, it’s going to be little, and it’ll be all the way up in South Dakota, probably.”

Noel winced. “Worth the drive?”

“Well … I mean, I’ll check tomorrow, but if you want my money on it … no. Sorry. There’s a few little system set-ups in the works, but nothing I can forsee producing anything worthwhile. Probably a bust day.”

Lucky and Adam exchanged a look. “So what do we do on bust days?” Adam asked, over the slurping of the milkshake. Although this was supposed to be an educational trip, he was sort of desperately hoping the answer wasn’t going to be studying. Certainly, if he was in America, there would be something to do besides sit around and study.

“Well, Noel has some textbooks in the truck that you two can share, and -” Rachael caught their expressions and stopped to laugh. “Nah, just kidding. I mean, you can if you want to, but doesn’t sound very fun, does it?” They shook their heads slowly. “Noel and I have a lot of photos and video to edit, so we’re gonna be pretty tied up with that most of the day, but since we won’t be traveling anywhere, might make sense for us to head back to Kansas City tonight and stay there, and you guys can explore around tomorrow if you want. There’s museums and stuff there, and it’s not even a two-hour drive, so not too bad to head to tonight.”

Lucky nodded. “Kansas City’s good with me. I’ve never been there.”

“I have once,” Adam said, as the waitress set his food down in front of him. Regardless of the quality of the burger, it was certainly one of the biggest burgers he’d ever seen. Next to him, Lucky made a confused noise that reminded him, a little, of Crowley, and made something that felt a little like homesickness twist in his gut, although that might have just been hunger at the sight of the burger and fries. “Nah, just kidding.” He picked up a fry and smirked at the other boy. “I’m game though.”

“I was so confused for a minute.” The waitress set down Lucky’s meal: an enormous plate of fried chicken. “Oh man, oh yes.”

“You really gonna eat all that?”

“Or die trying.”

Noel sighed wistfully. “I wish I could still eat like that without needing a handful of antacids afterwards.” He’d ordered a BLT for himself, and Rachael had chosen a tuna melt.

“You can have a piece if you want?” Lucky pushed the drumstick close to Noel, who shook his head. “Sure?”

“Enjoy it for me. Much as I’d like it, I’d prefer to sleep tonight.”

They ate in silence for a while. Adam considered his burger. It was certainly good, but was it one of the best? He chewed each bite thoughtfully, and tried to balance the juiciness of the meat with the sharpness of the cheese and the varied tastes - sweet, acid, umami - of the condiments. About a quarter of the way through, he settled on the conclusion that it maybe wasn’t the best he’d ever had, but it certainly was in the top five. He set it down to take a photo of it for the group, which he would include with the tornado pictures when he sent them later.

“You guys still have to show me your pictures,” Rachael said, the sight of Adam’s phone jogging her memory. “Lucky, you took a million yesterday and today - I heard your camera. Any favorites?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed his mouthful of chicken. “I’ll show you when I’m not greasy.”

“Deal.” She cocked her head, a loose lock of dark hair falling across her nose. She blew it out of the way. “How about you, Adam?”

He thought about all the photos and videos he’d taken, and considered. “I think some are pretty good,” he concluded. “My friends back home loved some of the ones from yesterday, but I think that was more because of the tornado and not as much the quality of the photography. I’ll show you when I’m done.”

“That’s fair.” She nudged Noel. “I know you have some great pictures, I heard your camera going off all day like it was going out of style.”

Noel replied, and Adam ate quietly as they bantered back and forth. He grinned a little too, around bites of burger, because for two research partners, Noel and Rachael were really very funny together. He wondered if they were more than research partners, but neither had ever said, and while he wouldn’t have thought twice about asking when he was eleven, at eighteen he liked to think he had picked up enough social graces through the years to know better than to come out with a question like that*. Besides, neither wore a ring, and neither had made any kind of overt romantic gesture toward the other, which led Adam to believe that if they were more than research partners, they probably didn’t like to discuss it with customers. 

[*And if anything, Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship had taught him that an obvious friendship and incredible chemistry didn’t always infer a relationship that any involved parties would be willing to talk about for any length of time without blushing, or turning into a gigantic serpent and escaping through a window. Although Adam also knew the latter was significantly less likely within the general population.]

“So where are you guys from?” Lucky asked, and Adam startled out of his reverie. “I mean, I read your bios online, but like - Noel, you’re from around this part of the country, aren’t you?”

“Not quite - I’m from Montana.” Noel’s expression changed when he mentioned that state, settled into something calm and peaceful. “Big Sky country. Not too many tornadoes up that way, though, but the winter storms can be something up in the mountains. That’s home base for me, when it’s not chasing season.”

“So you like snow and stuff?”

“Oh, yeah! Cross-country skiing, trapping, fishing.” He laughed. “Growing up out there, just me and my mom, it was a little wild. She’s kind of a frontier-woman type, so we grew or hunted a lot of our own food.” He shrugged. “Not that I don’t love it, obviously, nothing better than being out in nature if you ask me, but I do like being able to run to the store when I’m out of peanut butter. College domesticated me, I guess.”

“Education’ll do that,” Rachael agreed, laughing. “One minute you’re Grizzly Adams, the next you’re eating Top Ramen and yelling at the weather channel in an air-conditioned dorm because it’s kind of hot outside.”

Noel acted affronted at that. “My dorm didn’t have air conditioning, excuse you.”

“Oh, so sorry, my mistake.” Lucky and Adam were laughing, which Adam rather suspected was the intended outcome of the little show the two scientists were putting on. “Was it actually a constructed building or did you fashion your own dorm out of hewn logs?”

Noel shook his head. “They wouldn’t let me build a log cabin on campus, can you believe?” He nodded her way. “Anyway, that’s me, what about you? Where you from? The public wants to know.”

“Florida.” Rachael sighed. “Sorry to say, I am Florida Woman.” Lucky and Adam laughed again. “Fighting alligators, selling fake Superbowl tickets, finding manatees in the swimming pool … Yes, all my doing.”

Lucky looked somewhat worried, and Adam paused. “Wait, really?”

“No.” She scoffed. “Well, okay, one time a manatee did get into our pool, but that was one time. During a hurricane.” She waved a hand. “Storm surge, you know how it is. Anyway, I did not grow up on the wild plains of America - I grew up like a normal American kid in a kind-of-nice trailer park on the Gulf coast, and was already completely civilized by the time I arrived at college.”

Adam nodded. “Did you guys meet in college, or … ?” he trailed off, letting the question hang. Rachael’s mouth dropped open.

“Adam, how old do you think I am?”

Adam winced. “Sorry, I just -” but she was laughing anyway, and he relaxed and broke into a grin. “Sorry.”

“Kidding, kidding. No, we didn’t meet in college. Well,” she amended, “I was in college. He was working for OSU at the time, I think?” Noel nodded in confirmation. “Anyway, I was working with OSU’s lightning research team and he was helping with the mesonet, so that’s where we met. Then a few years later, when I was looking to do more lightning research for my PhD, he had started storm chasing, and he actually hired me on.” She shrugged. “Free research opportunities for me, and another driver for him.”

“Plus I can pay her in Dunkin coffee, which is a lot less than what the other candidates I interviewed wanted,” he joked. She made a face at him. “Alright, and money, yes. Even benefits, eventually.”

Rachael pushed her plate away, the tuna melt long gone and the fries all but eaten. She rested her face in her hands. “Yeah, that was a bigger adventure than storm chasing was that year, I think. God, getting him to do literally any amount of official paperwork is actually painful.”

“Which is why I gave her a raise and expanded her duties to include the business operations.” He snorted. “Worked out great for me - I just keep the truck and the equipment running, and don’t get us killed, she finds the storms and does taxes.”

Lucky frowned then, and Adam could almost hear what the other boy was thinking. He watched Lucky chew a french fry thoughtfully, swallow, and then open his mouth. Rachael, grinning like a shark, headed him off before he could get a word out. “If you’re about to ask if we are anything more than business partners, the answer is no. Everyone thinks so, though.” She sighed. “Alas, I’m married to a lovely woman who holds down the fort in Florida, and Noel here is married to Montana, I think.”

“Yeah, okay.” He shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“And you both just really like weather?” Adam asked, also choosing to push his plate away, although the handful of fries left were practically calling to him. “S’how you got into storm chasing?”

“I mean, I grew up in lightning country, so I guess it just carried on from there. I always liked it, wanted to know how it worked.” Rachael shrugged. “You?”

“I like road trips and tornadoes,” Noel answered, simply. “I went to college with a plan to get a business degree or something, but I actually went chasing for the first time after my freshman year, kind of fell into it, and switched my major to geology after that.”

Adam sat back. “Wicked.”

The waitress came back with the bill, and they all threw down a little cash, before wandering back out to the truck. Behind the storm, the sky was clear and dark, a few stars winking over the light pollution. Noel looked up as they crossed the parking lot and sighed. “You know that’s the thing about Montana. It really does have a sky you don’t get anywhere else. Figuratively speaking.”

“My Dad took me out to Colorado once,” Lucky said, conversationally. “We were out at some base in the middle of nowhere. The stars were insane - you could see the milky way and everything. Back home, there’s so much light pollution you’re lucky if you see enough stars to count on two hands.” He sighed, wistful. “Sometimes I think I might move out this way after school. I’m sick of DC, anyway.”

“Can’t imagine it’s a quiet place to live,” Rachael said sympathetically. “And if you’re looking to study meteorology it’s nice to have it closer to your backyard, so to speak. ‘Course, if you stay in Washington, maybe you could lobby against climate change.” Lucky made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and stuck out his tongue. “Or not. Just a thought.”

“No way. I’m over it. The whole DC rat-race.” He waved his arms, and then hauled the door to the back seat of the truck open. “Forget it.” Once in the truck, he looked across the back seat to Adam, who was fiddling with his seatbelt in the dark. “What about you, Adam? You think you wanna stay in England?”

“Oh, yeah,” Adam replied, without ever even having to think about it. He had, after all, made up his mind about that ages ago. “I like to travel and everything, though, so it’d be cool to find some job where you get to travel a bit. But yeah, Tadfield’ll always be home for sure.”

“That’s cool.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs, wiping the last remnants of chicken grease off on his shorts. “Is it a big place?”

Adam shook his head. “Oh, no. Few hundred people at the outside. But it’s close to Oxford, and not all that far from London, so it’s kind of the best of both worlds, I guess.” He looked out of the window, and tried to ignore the feeling of homesickness then - definitely not hunger anymore, no way it could be after that burger.

There was quiet for a minute, and then, gently, Rachael said, “Have you ever been away from home this long before?”

“No,” he answered, automatically, and then he flinched, glad for the darkness and the fact that his face was turned away from Lucky. He wasn’t ashamed that he hadn’t traveled for six weeks before, not at all, but he didn’t want the other guy to think he was some homesick little kid. “No,” he decided, going on as if he was bored with the subject, “but I’ve gone away for a couple weeks before, on holiday.”

“Six weeks is a long time,” Rachael answered, tone neutral. “I guess if we’re not going to be chasing tomorrow you’ll have time to call England at a reasonable hour, though, so there’s something, right?” She cracked the laptop open and smiled in the soft glow of the screen. “Silver lining in every cloud, right?”

“You see clouds?” Lucky leaned around the seat a little to get a better look.

“Not a one.”

-

When they arrived in Kansas City, the sun had long-since set, and the lights of the city illuminated the sky with a soft glow. They found a hotel on the outskirts of the city, cheap and clean, and parted ways to crash for the evening. Adam was looking forward to a quick shower and the soft embrace of a hotel mattress, but as he started to unpack for the night it appeared Lucky had other plans.

“So what do you think we should do tomorrow?”

“Huh? Oh. I dunno. What do you want to do?”

Lucky thought it over. “Dunno. We could just wander around the city, I guess. Oh, there’s an amusement park. You like rollercoasters?”

“They’re cool.” Adam shrugged. “Any museums or anything? Or like, barbecue?”

“Oh, a barbecue tour. Might be cool.” He tapped at his phone for a while, and scratched his beard thoughtfully. “What about this haunted building walking tour?”

“Oh yeah? Sounds awesome, actually. I’d be up for it.”

Lucky put his head to the side. “Yeah, I guess the Mormons were big around here for awhile? Oh, man, if we had a car we could take a day trip to the Garden of Eden, apparently.”

That drew a laugh out of Adam. “The Garden of Eden?” he asked, incredulous. “In driving distance? What is it, like a religious amusement park or something?”

“No, no, some people believe that the Garden of Eden was here in Missouri.” He giggled. “I always heard Eden was in the middle east or whatever. Like Mesopotamia area. Guess it could have been in Missouri though. Why not? No one really knows.”

Adam laughed. “I dunno, maybe someone does.”

“What, you know some immortals?” Lucky grinned. “Or what, wizards? Is Hogwarts real? I mean, I did move away when I was eleven, I could have missed my Hogwarts letter.”

“Never been to Hogwarts, nah. But you never know.” He shrugged. “All kinds of scholars figure it’s in the middle east. Maybe one of ‘em has an inside line, you know?”

“To who? God?”

Adam smirked. “You never know. Anyway, I’m gonna grab a shower. I’m in for the ghost tour thing tomorrow, though - sounds awesome.”

“You think they’re real?” The question stopped Adam halfway to the bathroom. “Ghosts, that is.”

Adam considered it. He could be honest**, of course, but then would Lucky think he was weird? But then the other boy had been the one to bring up the ghosts up in the first place. He chewed it over for a second, and then shrugged again. “Yeah.”

[** Not completely honest. There were things that he would always leave out. Being the actual Antichrist, for one.]

“Same.” He frowned. “I mean, I’ve never seen one, but there’s so many people that believe they exist, and that they’ve seen them, there has to be something to it, right?”

“Well …” Adam chewed his lip, and then, after a second, smiled. “Alright, maybe, yeah, but to play devil’s advocate for a minute, what if it’s not ghosts at all, but a totally natural phenomenon? Infrasound, or something?”

Lucky cocked his head. “Huh? What’s that?”

Adam looked to the shower, and then tossed his pajamas into the bathroom, haphazard on the tile floor, before he turned back around and headed to sit on his bed, legs crossed and leaned back, across from Lucky. He raised an eyebrow. “Infrasound. Supposedly can make people see and hear and thing all kinds of stuff. Hallucinations and everything.”

“I’ve never heard of it.” Lucky tossed his phone aside and fixed Adam with his full attention. “It can make people see ghosts?”

Adam grinned, wide and wicked. “You ever heard of the incident at Dyatlov Pass?”

“No. Is it weird?” Adam nodded. “Cool?” Another nod. “Mysterious?” A very affirmative nod. “Dude, tell me everything.”

Adam did. The pajamas sat, forgotten, on the bathroom floor, until the early hours of the morning, while the boys chattered on.

-

“Independence, Missouri.” The 4-Runner’s brakes didn’t dare squeak as it pulled to a stop. The engine hushed and shut off, and Crowley and Aziraphale sat for a long minute, staring out of the dark windshield to a field lit only by the car’s headlights. They didn’t need them, so Crowley shut them off too. “City of Zion,” Aziraphale observed, dryly. “Site of the Garden of Eden, they say.”

“I don’t remember all the corn,” Crowley said. Aziraphale didn’t respond, instead opening his door and stepping out of the car, into the humid night air. Above, the stars that managed to shine in spite of the light pollution glimmered weakly through the gaps in the clouds. 

Aziraphale surveyed the field below them, and when he spoke again, it was in a language so long-dead that Crowley had to scramble to figure out what he was saying, at first. But it surprised him, eventually, how easily it came back, how it rolled off his tongue when he replied, like it had never died, never been shattered to the four corners when the Tower fell.

“It’s funny, how they think, don’t you think?” The angel chuckled a little. “Wonder what our lives would have been like if it had really been here, don’t you?”

Crowley was silent for a second, and then Aziraphale looked over, surprised, as a skinny elbow dug into his ribs. “Maybe I’d have been a corn snake.”

“Crowley,” he admonished, while the demon burst out into laughter. “You’re speaking a dead language that’s not been heard in thousands of years, and you make a pun? Have some respect.”

“I never will.” He ran his hands through his hair, still snickering. “If the Garden was actually in Missouri …” He sighed. “Well, for one, we’d have different accents.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” He left the demon to his own devices for a minute, giggling and making terrible puns in a tongue long-forgotten, and instead looked over the cornfield, flat and stretched out across the plains. On the other side, he could just hear the sound of running water.

“Oy, angel.” Startled, Azirpahale looked to Crowley, wide-eyed. The other was watching him, and because his sunglasses were perched on his head, sending Crowley’s mess of red hair in all sorts of directions, Aziraphale could see his eyes properly. He looked amused, most of all, but somewhere in there he was watching Aziraphale carefully. Thoughtful. “What’re you thinking about?”

“The Garden. The real Garden.” He looked around, the creatures of the night crying and squeaking and chirping all around. “Do you think, Crowley, that if it had been here - really, in real life - things would have gone the same?”

Crowley puffed out a breath, thoughtful. “Deep, angel. S’a big question. You’re giving everything a whole new beginning, for a start. It’s all so big, an’ ineffable, hard to know, isn’t it?”

“The ineffable plan might have stayed the same.”

Crowley shifted uncomfortably. “It … would be different though, wouldn’t it? It’d have to be. The Garden is in a whole different place.”

“Not necessarily. What happened in the Garden probably didn’t happen just because the Garden was where it was. It happened because of the plan -”

“Oh, sod the plan,” Crowley said with a disgusted noise. “It happened because Eve wanted to know what else was out there, and Adam agreed with her. And She made it easy for them to find out, in a way.” He pointed upwards, to where the moon was trying to peek through the wispy layer of clouds left behind from the day’s storms. “Could have always put it up there.” He snorted. “She never had a plan, she just set the pieces out and let them fall where they did.”

Aziraphale scowled in the way he always did when his disagreed, and disapproved, but he didn’t say anything about it. It was an argument they had had time and time again - Aziraphale arguing that the plan is ineffable and therefore extant but not anything either he or Crowley would ever be able to understand, and Crowley arguing that there was no plan to begin with, and She was ad-libbing and rolling with the hits as they came - and he didn’t feel like having it tonight. Instead, he re-set his expression to a more neutral, thoughtful one, and slid his hand into Crowley’s. The demon, wordlessly, squeezed it. “What about us?”

Crowley looked surprised. “What about us?” He shifted nervously onto his heels, and then laced his fingers through Aziraphale’s, the better to keep his balance.

“Would we have turned out the same, do you think?”

“I …” Crowley trailed off. He thought. Aziraphale let him, and stood beside him in companionable silence, trying to corral his own ideas about that question into something he might be able to elucidate. “Depends,” Crowley decided, eventually. “I’d have still done the bit at the start of it all, but after that …” He fixed Azirpahale with a curious expression. “Would you have still given away your sword?”

It was a question Aziraphale hadn’t expected, only because the answer to it was so obvious. He blinked. “Of course.”

The demon nodded, satisfied. “Then angel, I would have followed you to the ends of the Earth to find out what you were going to do next, no matter where we started.” He squeezed Aziraphale’s hand. “So we’d probably have ended up just the same.”

The thought of it made the angel smile, and he stepped closer to Crowley, standing close enough that their shoulders bumped and settled together, close and familiar and soft in spite of Crowley’s bony joints. “With different accents.”

“Well, yeah. With different accents. Naturally.”

-

Now with Chapter 10!

[goldenkid]

The Silver City - Morai modern au part 1

Just as they started shooting at her, Scar’s phone rang. She cursed, cutting it off without looking at the name, and ducked down into another alley. She needed to get back to her apartment before the people chasing her caught up. Maybe they didn’t hear it ringing, Scar thought as she reached the end of the street. Then a bullet ricocheted off the bricks by her head and she jumped, ducking round a corner and setting off at a sprint. Crap. They found me—and they have guns.

Still, she was a fast runner, and she knew this part of the city better than they did. It was dark—they hadn’t seen her face. All she had to do was lead them on a wild goose chase, then slip away and leg it back to her apartment. Would have been a lot easier if they didn’t have guns. Still, she didn’t have time to stop and think about it. Her latest job had gone sour: the down-on-his-luck homeless guy she’d been helping turned out to be on the run from the secret police, and she’d been unlucky enough to be there when they found him. Things had gone down badly, the guy she was helping had been caught, and Scar had run.

She kept running now, bursting out of the alley and into a busy street. The ground level was bright, full of shops and people and the occasional market stall, but there were plenty of dark spots to hide in. Scar kept to them now, slipping between people and around stalls, keeping to the shadows. Her hood threatened to slip off and she yanked it back up, swearing again under her breath. They didn’t know who she was—that was her biggest advantage. If she could get away now, they’d never find her. She’d be safe. If they did find her, though…

Scar pushed that thought away. At least they can’t use their guns out here. She glanced behind her, but there was no sign of her pursuers. This was her chance. There was an alley at the end of the street, small enough for her to disappear into. She started veering towards it—and then her phone rang again. The ringtone was muted, but Scar’s heart still missed a beat as she pulled it out. Whoever this is, I’m gonna—

The name on the screen read Ari. She frowned. If he’d called her twice in five minutes, it could be urgent—and knowing Ari he’d keep calling until she picked up. There was no such thing as subtlety when you were dealing with Ari. Crap. Scar looked back again, still forging her way through the crowd. Safe. For now.

They won’t shoot me out here, she reassured herself, though the words felt hollow. Then, sighing, she picked up the phone.

‘Scar!’ Ari’s voice crackled happily into her ear. ‘I have a job for you!’

‘Ari—’ Scar squeezed herself through a gap in a loud bunch of tourists. ‘I’m kind of busy. Can you just—’

‘You’re always busy! This job is important—it’s a really good one!’

‘You say that about every job.’ Just then, someone behind her screamed. Scar looked up sharply and saw a tight bunch of people in black, muscling through the crowd. They were still a good distance away—but they wouldn’t be for long. It was now or never.

‘No, really,’ Ari was saying as Scar took a sharp right, slipping through the gap at the end of the street and stumbling into a tiny alley, just wide enough for her to run down. She pounded along it without looking back, Ari’s voice still in her ear. ‘This person’s a friend of mine. A good friend. She lives in the lower city, her job just got stolen and she’s having a hard time.’

‘A friend of yours?’ Scar huffed, taking a tight corner into a slightly wider alley. She found herself jogging uphill, leaving the depths of the lower city behind her. ‘You have other friends?’

‘Loads!’ Ari said. Scar raised her eyebrows and Ari must have sensed it, because he sighed. ‘Fine. I don’t have many friends—but that just makes this more important! She’s worth helping, I swear.’

‘Okay,’ was all Scar said, mostly because she didn’t have the breath to say more. And because, in spite of herself, she was considering what Ari had told her. She’d known him a long time: if he said this Thalia girl was worth helping, it was probably true.

Then again, Scar’s last job hadn’t exactly turned out great. Being chased at gunpoint through the lower city wasn’t brilliant, especially when the ones chasing her were the secret police. She’d vowed to never get mixed up with them, or the people they worked for, ever again. Tonight had been close enough—just the thought of it made Scar’s stomach twist. I need to get off the streets.

She forced herself to slow down before she collapsed. The lower city was almost behind her now, and she was coming out into familiar territory. The streets were wider and cleaner, the houses smaller and not as looming. She looked back, scanning the streets behind her for activity, but it looked like she’d lost her followers. She took a moment to stare at the lower city, sprawled below her, dark and busy, before she turned away. She’d had enough danger for tonight. Her apartment was close, and the secret police would be roaming the city until dawn.

A minute later, Ari’s voice in her ear made her jump. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘What do you think?’

Scar pulled her mind back to the phone call, away from brooding darkness. ‘I can’t do another job right now,’ she said as she turned into a familiar street. ‘Give me a few weeks. Then maybe.’ She stopped outside her apartment building, her focus already drifting away from the phone call and towards her safe, warm bed.

‘Thalia might not have a few weeks—’ Ari was insistent, and Scar let his voice fade away as she shoved her phone in her mouth, searching around for her keys. She took one last look around the dark street—empty—and opened the door. ‘…don’t know how long she’ll last.’ Ari finished as Scar climbed the stairs, only half listening. The adrenaline was finally starting to fade, and her legs shook slightly as she let herself into her apartment. I need a drink. And some food. And then sleep.

‘I’ll think about it, okay?’ she said, putting her phone on speaker and crossing to the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle and swigged from it as she opened the cupboard, looking for something instant to cook.

‘She really needs help,’ Ari said. ‘And I know you’re the only person who can do it.’

‘Don’t guilt trip me,’ Scar said, digging out a packet of noodles. ‘Why can’t you help her?’

‘You know why.’ She could almost hear Ari frowning over the phone. ‘And besides,’ he said, ‘this isn’t something I can fix. She’s a mechanic, a good one, but she could be more than that. She would have been, if her shop hadn’t been bought up out of nowhere. She’s got nothing now, and she’s trying to support her parents too. They’re in the Cranfield Asylum—you know the one.’

‘I’ve heard of it’. The asylum was a dumping ground for the old, the poor and the insane. Scar would feel sorry for her worst enemies in there. ‘That’s a pretty good sob story.’

‘You see why she needs help? This is exactly your sort of thing!’

Scar sat on the counter, bottle by her side, and watched her ramen go round in the microwave as she turned it over in her mind. The drink was smoothing out her mind, making the guns and the lingering stitch in her side seem unreal. Another job didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

‘Hmm. Maybe.’

‘I’ll email you,’ Ari said, his joy palpable.

‘Great.’ Scar grabbed her food. ‘Regretting it already.’ But she didn’t have the energy to turn Ari down now. All she wanted to do was replace the buzz of adrenaline with alcohol, enjoy her noodles, and forget how close she’d come to being caught by the secret police. ‘I gotta go.’

‘See you!’ Ari said. He was grinning. She could tell. Scar sighed, the words I can’t do this on the tip of her tongue, but he’d already ended the call.

She reached over to turn off her phone. I don’t need another job, she told herself. No matter how interesting Thalia sounds. If she was gonna starve, Ari would help her. But she knew he couldn’t: Ari was almost as broke as the people she went into the lower city to help. He never seemed to run completely out of money, though, wandering around and always coming back with a grin, enough cash to survive, and a load of weird stories. He was Scar’s best friend, and he was also the person who found most of her jobs.

There was no exact name for what Scar did. She had an apartment in the upper city, enough money to help people, and no dreams of her own. So she did what she could, saving people who’d lost everything—the ones who’d been cheated out of their homes, their jobs, and their wealth, who’d had their lives taken by one of the big companies who held the power in the city.

She couldn’t fix them completely, but Scar was a pro at finding people places to sleep, getting them stop-gap jobs cleaning or flipping burgers, just about keeping them from starving. There were shops in the lower city staffed entirely by people Scar had helped. She was persuasive and resourceful, and she had enough money to give people the occasional boost. And, even better, no-one knew her name.

She helped, as long as she was anonymous. But that had nearly been shattered tonight. Even though she was safe, eating ramen in her apartment, Scar shuddered. If she’d been caught…

Best case scenario, they didn’t recognise her. She got a warning, they beat her up, and her name went on a list somewhere. That, or the secret police shot her and left her body in an alley. And then there was the worst-case scenario—the one she couldn’t even bear to think about.

Her phone pinged, and Scar jumped. She grabbed it, trying to calm her suddenly rapid heartbeat. I need to do something. Maybe drinking and brooding wasn’t the best way of coping. It might help to throw myself into something new, she thought. Something that has nothing to do with the secret police.

On her phone was an email from Ari, titled Thalia. She found herself opening it, then scanning the info he’d sent. Thalia’s case looked like a simple one—struggling in the lower city, her job stolen by one of the big companies, leaving her practically on the streets. I need to clear my head, Scar decided. This could be a good distraction.

She paused, thought fuck it, and then texted Ari. A moment later an address popped up, and it was decided. First Scar would sleep, and then she was going back into the lower city. And this time, nothing was going to go wrong.

// That’s part 1 of the modern au! Done!! It’s set in a definitely-unreal city, so it’s only kinda modern, but there’s guns and stuff so I’m saying it counts. It’s not perfect but I’m excited to write more! whenever that is! If you want to be added/removed from the tag list just ask:

@lonelylibrary @no-url-ideas-tho @concerningwolves @idreamonpaper @jess---writes @the-ichor-of-ruination @easternstorms @nerocael @omgbrekkerkaz