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Verdy had inspected the leaflet several times. On every side. She had even flipped it upside down to check it from that angle. It was, from every direction, legit. Or at least as far as she could tell. Few things, in life, are free, and to have a class promising balance, stability, come up at this time when she was feeling most confused and shaken…

It was almost as if it were planned.

She didn’t believe in fate, but this was something similar. She decided to check it out. If someone had gone to all the trouble of messing with her dreams, creating a ‘spiritual balance’ centre and printing fliers, they obviously wanted to meet her pretty bad. If not, hey it was something free.

She found the place with little trouble and stood for a moment outside simply observing how much glass was in the place. What was the owner trying to prove, transparency? Clear motives? Cheap lighting? Whatever it was, the point was made in a shimmering, shiny kind of way. The building was, on the whole, not very threatening.

The receptionist was a pretty young woman, and very pleasant. Approachable, as it were. Verdy marched right up to the desk and looked her full in the face.

“I’d like to see Mr Spiritual Balance, please.”

Because the last name on the flier was surely impossible for all but those possessing the most dextrose of tongues to pronounce.

The receptionist guided Verdy into the small room and handed the paperwork she had meticulously filled in to the doctor waiting there. He nodded her to a seat and observed her answers with a detached air- as if he had no idea the headache reading the questions and writing the answers had been. He probably didn’t. He read over the answers, seeking clarification here and there and asking her to pronounce her name. Which he then massacred, but recognisably.

“Your active X-gene-” he peered at her, as if seeking the visual manifestation of the gene “has it any effect on your sight?” She shook her head. “No magnification? Heat vision? Ability to see in the dark?” at each shake of her head he made a mark on his list, a list he was evidently using to determine if he would be able to help her. It did seem silly to prescribe glasses to someone with laser-beam eyes, or contact lenses to someone who could taste with their eyes (what a strange mutation to have, whatever would it be useful for?). Her mutation, however, had no impact on the doctors tools, or on the glasses he would prescribe.

The tests were over quickly. Look through this lens. Now that one. With one eye, with the other, with both. Now read the first six lines. How many dots? She gave him her old reading glasses to look at as well, as badly broken as they were, and he made a note of that too, on the seemly never ending page of notes on herself. Hopefully all would go smoothly, being 20 she was far past the legal age for leaving home, and if ever there had been an auto-tab attached to her name, alerting the authorities that she had been found, it was long gone. Still, it made her a little nervous.

After another few tests she was asked to hand the assistant the prescription and wait until they made the glasses up for her. They would make up two pairs, he explained, one for reading and writing and the other for working on the computer. The reading ones were fairly simple and after she had picked out the frames they would only take half an hour. The computer ones were more complicated and could take up to two.

The frames were easy enough to pick out. Black squarish glasses for reading, the more rounded cousin in the same brand for the computer glasses. Leaving her name and details with the lady at the front desk she informed her that she was going to step out for a bit, but would be back before the half-hour was up. The woman made her pay before she left and, although surprised, she figured that was reasonable. Who knew how many times they had been robbed by a glasses-stealing mutant. Or, you know, had people forget.

Next door to the optometrist there was a slightly quirky teenage clothing store and she entered it to have a browse, she was only just out of her ‘teen’ years, earlier that month in fact. She still applied to the teen store. She flicked through the overpriced hoodies and shirts, cute or interesting, yes. Worth the price-tag, no. The jeans were much more reasonable (probably because of the profit they were making off the shirts) and she chose a pair that had a reduced sticker on them simply for missing a button on one of the pockets. It was about time she got some new jeans, judging from the stains on the pair she was wearing that just wouldn’t come out.

The odds and ends bucket yielded glasses cases with the superman ‘S’ plastered on them in one of two colours. She bought one of each. A lunchbox and a cheaper T-shirt sporting an adorable boy in a dinosaur suit followed. Her phone bleeped the fifteen minute alarm she had set, and she moved quickly through the checkout, accepting the bag proudly carrying the store’s logo and back to the waiting room next door.

~~“Um... I guess, you have any specific place in mind?"

Elizabeth’s moment of hesitation spoke volumes and Verdy grinned at her. The advanced payment for clothes and other bits and pieces she had received from Mondragon far, far exceeded her expectations and, as such, she had had more than enough for the suit, shoes, stationary and plenty left over.

“My shout, in recognition of your return to the force.”

She tipped an imaginary hat to the young woman and began to lead the way, pausing only for a moment to fix the total with the young man her glare had startled a little while before. She knew just the place. A small business, fighting hard to raise its head against the chain-stores. The owner was a sweet young woman, only ten years older than Verdy, who made not only the best coffee for brilliant prices, but made a lunch deal to die for. She had washed dishes there on the occasion to earn a meal on a more cold day, and in return for delivering leaflets one winter she was allowed to sit by the real-wood-fire every day and choose one drink a week. Verdy’s terms, not the owners. She was far to generous as it was, and it was Verdy’s turn to be generous.

“I know just the little place. Friendly, old-fashioned almost, and they have some wicked-good staff”

Wicked-good was a phrase she had picked up from some of the younger mansionites, she had been determined to test it out on someone else before she shared it with Slate, and she checked the cop’s reaction carefully.

How many years had it been since she had been in a pillow fight? Four? Five? Had it been when she was fifteen, a year before she left? Her fourth year away from home was drawing near, and the absence of fun in that time had been far too great. Sure, nicking a shirt from a store gave you a rush, but it wasn’t a good one. No-one ever took the “I needed it” for an excuse.

The solid pillow thwap to the face cut short her memory-moment and with a cry that may just have been ‘mutaneering cur’ she swung at the reeling first mate. Missed. The first mate was testing out her bed, for a moment it almost looked like she was going to- no- she wouldn’t dare… There would be no victory dance for this green pirate. She squinted at the girl in a threatening way.

“Bring it on you villainous cockroach!”

She brung it. The green girl bounced onto her own bed, Verdy swayed for a moment at the change of footing and caught the swing skilfully, yes skilfully, with her shoulder, opening her friend’s unprotected side for biffing.

“Ahaahaargh”

Verdy was dreaming. What she was dreaming about she wasn’t quite sure- being asleep and all- but even in her sleep she was fighting it, wrestling it away. She knew, without knowing, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about it, whatever it was. Her face was flushed and her legs kicked under the covers. When you can’t win, run.

It started spasmodically, one leg by itself, a gap for several minutes, then the other. Suddenly she was no longer running from it, it had caught her, pinned her underwater. Relief turned to panic. She had to swim. She was sinking, her head was going under, she couldn’t breathe. Whatever it was she was trying so hard not to think about was wrapping its fingers around her, dragging her down. Forcing her to look at it for what it was. She could feel the water leaking into her lungs as she tried to inhale.

She knew what it was.

Struggling to escape. The surface was so faraway, then almost in her grasp, then gone again. Her fingers brushed the underside of the water, but her face did not reach the air. Bubbles of the awake world swirled against her body. The hum of a clock, someone’s deep, shuddering breaths, were they her own?

With an almighty dream-kick she awoke midair between floor and bed. The sheets tangled around her body, squeezing like it’s fingers. The grasp of the unthinkable. It was Off Limits. Not to be thought of, much less dreamed. She coughed away the choking feeling and unwound her body from the sheets. The covers on the bed were re-arranged and she climbed under them up to her chin, before tossing all but the lightest blanket and the sheet to the floor.

She would not think of it. She would think of Andy, and the Alchemist, of rain on the street and grass in the park and anything else that didn’t sport piercing blue eyes.

It was not the sweat of feat that dampened her skin.

The boy next to her on the bed looked as if he might just like to take a chomp out of her, not a jelly-bean, although not for the taste. More like he had a personal vendetta against unnaturally coloured beans. She feared for a moment for her exposed skin, before recalling that the boy was having a cleansing frenzy and would not wish to have her blood splatter his carpet.

But she might not hang around, just in case.

He wanted to die. The fumes weren’t accidentally filling the room, they were on purpose, and she had killed- in a manner of speaking- his death plan. Although, if he had been expecting someone, surely he wouldn’t have wanted them to walk in on him dead. Perhaps she was the wrong kind of saviour. The kind of one who bursts in before the villain has finished tying the prisoner up and giving a five minute monologue. The kind which destroys dramatic timing.

She was not wanted here.

Tucking the beans into her pocket she surveyed the young man. He didn’t seem about to rip into his own arms with a pocket knife. More likely to cry himself sick and clean some more. Or wait for the timely saviour he had been expecting in the first place.

“Dying doesn’t solve anything.”

It wasn’t very insightful. Nor backed up with proof. It wasn’t even something she had come up with herself. She had stolen it from a poster hanging on a wall in one of the youth hostels she had sometimes stayed in. As if saying it made it true. Perhaps it was. It was strange knowing you might be walking out on someone leaving the world. So many things she should try and say to make things better. Her fingers on the doorframe she glanced at the boy, she hoped not for the last time.

“My offer still stands, if you need me.”

Not that he wanted to need her, by the look of him. She doubted he’d come even if he desperately needed somebody, anybody. The knowledge and doubt kind of hurt.

Her cookies were done, wonderfully, perfectly done. Sitting on the cooling rack (and on top of two baking dishes, since there were too many) they were almost glowing with ‘eat-me’ signs. Her fingers didn’t quite touch the cookies, but she could feel the heat of them, when she was interrupted by a voice from the doorway. A very flattering, wheedling voice.

Bubble-boy.

She grinned at the silliness. A party did sound good though.

“Well living is indeed the best way to, well… live. Beautiful and daring I think you tease, but you’ve got me on spontaneous”

The voice suggesting less-than-pure motives for ‘chatting her up’, as it were, was familiar and she smiled at the young man who entered behind Bubbles. After checking his face to make sure he was ok, and not going to pour bleach all over her cookies. A little shaken perhaps, and not enough sleep, but maybe he was just hungry.

“Hello Alchemist, how are you today?”

She wouldn’t mention spontaneous hugs, or the expectation of people who weren’t her, she wouldn’t even ask after the Calley the General was so anxious after, the last time she had seen him. She eyed the slightly bloodshot eyes. Someone wasn’t getting enough sleep.

“I’m making cookies! But, I might have made a few too many…”

She frowned in the general direction of the recipe, silly thing, making a hundred cookies. Her eyes darted up as another member was added to their group, ducking into the fridge for a moment before properly announcing himself. She carefully used a pancake flipper to scoop ten cookies into each of two take-out containers she had set aside for this purpose. Andy and Slate would get to taste her first batch of cookies, no matter how many people ended up sharing the cookies she wasn’t making another batch. She smiled at the scaley boy (boy? He was at least an inch taller than her) and indicated the cookies.

“Oh yes, I think there will be plenty.”

Her eyes darted up to the newest arrival, now this was curious, someone she hadn’t seen before. Not that she prowled the hallways of the mansion very often. He announced himself with no name, invited himself to the party and partook of a cookie without asking, the very same cookie she had been eying off a few moments before. As he shoved the slightly soft goodness into his mouth she almost felt a pout coming on, until she realised how utterly ridiculous that would be. There were far too many cookies anyway, she had been considering leaving them out for the younger mansionites a few minutes ago, so really the cookie was no loss. It was rude though. A little, bitter, part of her hoped that the choc chips that peeked so deliciously from that particular cookie were melted on the inside and burnt the sassy tongue of the newcomer.

Jerk.

The larger, sweeter, part didn’t mind so much, it was only a cookie. And what was a stolen cookie between potential friends.

“I’m Verdy. That was my cookie.”

Tremble? What tremble? There had been no tiny quiver in her words! Lies!

To prove it she used the pancake scooper to shovel the cookies onto a big platter, ready for sharing and looked at the boy.

“Are they good?”