Chapter Text
Anastasia was slightly estranged by her foresight. It showed her so many ghosts of the future, but none of the past. She couldn't put her thumb on exactly why, but it felt weird and uncomfortable, not to see anything of the rabbit. Not to be haunted by him, even. She lit out of the house soon after homeschooling had finished on most days, and sometimes even forgot she ought to turn around and make sure her dad was staying calm. She got lucky: he took to repainting the house and replacing the gutters and broken shingles, and kept busy. He seemed to have some vague idea of why she was so moody.
Anastasia never really said so aloud, but she'd lived her whole life watching herself die. Was that creepy? Sometimes when she stopped at a crosswalk, she could see in full detail what would happen were she to become distracted and step out into traffic. Her foresight could show her her future options, and sometimes that included stupid options; so she'd seen herself die, a lot. It occurred to her that she might have grown desensitized to the look of death without ever being confronted with living through the repercussions of it.
Even when she'd killed that thug, she hadn't needed to stick around for his funeral; she hadn't known him or been forced to live in a world where he suddenly didn't exist. By contrast, Nibbles' absence was very nearly freaking her out. Well, it was food for thought.
She needed a distraction.
"Hey I know that girl. Her family just moved into Canfor's place," an Afro-sporting boy with a thick Jersey twang ruminated aloud from his group of friends. "Hey! Girl!"
Anastasia paused, conducting a mental evaluation to determine if the speaker might be dangerous. A few representatives of his circle of relaxing comrades were presently smoking, and by the smell it was probably Cannabis, but the array of skateboards and basketballs scattered about their feet around suggested they already had a decent outlet for excess energy, and probably didn't want to mess with her for the fun of it. This holler was a friendly entreaty.
What should she do? Lately, she avoided people. Did she want to make friends? No, not really.
Friends took up time and energy. They got more curious about her than she ever got curious about them, and asked questions about her and where she was from and what her dad did and why she didn't want to hang out with them all the time (and do nothing worth doing for ninety percent of the time). Friends were nosy. Friends talked and talked and talked. Maybe if she just presented herself as having a strict father, she could slide away.
"Hey come over here!" Well, he was friendly-sounding and... to be honest, Anastasia had never really had an opportunity to be friends with boys before.
She turned and surveyed the little crowd—and stared just long enough to be slightly cold, to make it slightly awkward—but the Afro boy waved her closer a third time and so she strode up to them all with her hands still stuffed in her pockets and her jean hood low.
"Hey!" He greeted again. "You're new here, right?"
"Yeah," she grunted, agitatedly fingering the switchblade in her pocket despite knowing she was in no danger.
"I'm Jeremy! What's up?" he stood to actually shake her hand of all things. She warily shook back. This group was entirely male, which made her leery as to whether or not one of them thought her 'cute.' But as she looked about (and stretched the silence), she finally noticed at least two of the older boys were wearing hoodies padded down about the arms with duct tape, and that was a telltale badge of a northeastern, inner city kid who did obstacle traversal.
Huh. This was the sort of group she'd previously preferred to watch from afar. They'd always been older than her. Most of them still were older than her. Always boys, for some reason, maybe with a token girl or two. She frowned and glanced up at Jeremy. "I'm Anastasia," she decided to give him.
"Nice to meet you!" Jeremy would be a good salesman or actor in the future. He had a big, winning smile, and an inability to be deflated by awkward pauses.
One of the others asked: "She Autistic or somethin?"
Would that it was so easy as that. She'd certainly felt autistic as a young child, walking into a mall and being absolutely overwhelmed by stimuli from the future.
"Maybe she's scared," someone else supposed. "That house is haunted as fuck."
Those weren't the sorts of ghosts she saw, sadly.
"What do you want her to do, natter on like a chick in a shoe store? Let her go."
"Naw, you got me wrong, she's not girly, I've seen her at the Rec," Jeremy explained, making Ana unexpectedly curious about what sorts of people watched her that she'd never know about.
"So she's sporty? Who-"
"She does the rock wall. Why don't you show her some of your moves, Ang?"
"I like parkour," she growled noncommittally, "and street dancing." They paused, glanced at each other, and then... took the bait! Perhaps, being boys, they'd show off for just about anyone; Two got to their feet, looking half shy but half already in-the-zone as they studied their surroundings and considering their options. Inwardly, she applauded herself, because it was a lot easier to learn new moves by watching a real person, one with many possible futures, twisting and pushing their body to pull off stunts. Videos always ended the same way.
They asked her to watch, and she sat gladly and quietly and slightly apart from the rest to do just that. She committed to a minimum of conversation with curious Jeremy. It wasn't that anything was wrong with him, she reflected, it was just that she didn't really want to like him. That would take energy and go nowhere; he'd ask a thousand questions, and she'd feint, feint, feint, feint, feint...
"Where you from?" Gotham, but she couldn't say it. Besides, they'd probably think less of her. "What do you do?" Stab kidnappers. "What's your dad do?" Stab everyone else. There were no real answers she could give, but eventually one of the other boys shook Jeremy loose from her and just let her walk. Maybe they liked how quiet and attentive she was, and the way her eyes followed the action instead of drifting down to her phone.
When her 'teachers' had finished showing off, she praised their best maneuvers by name, and learned a few regional variants to how one talked about the art. Then she bluffed that it was 'time' for her to go, and she told them that maybe she'd come around to watch them again sometime, and they seemed happy with that.
And so that had been interesting; a sort of ghostly friendship without any of the real commitment. Was 'quickly making acquaintances' a skill, she wondered? 'Sudden social chameleon!' It sounded like a useful ability to have, like, if one was running from the cops. Just poof: suddenly I am part of this group of old men roasting marshmallows over a barrel fire. Totally innocent, aside from the illegal barrel fire of course, your quarry must have run off some other direction.
She didn't glance back towards the boys, but she rolled over the small handful of names she'd learned in her mind, and she felt a little wistful, resentful, and uncomfortable all in one. She ruminated on that, as she wove through alleys and parking lots, and it occurred to her that her problem wasn't that she didn't want friends, but rather that 'friends' were supposed to be trustworthy. And Anastasia couldn't trust anyone: not with her deep secrets, not with the odd nature of her behavior, and not with why she trained so heavily without trying to compete in anything. She'd never know how to explain these things to a satisfactory level, and she'd always resent peoples' questions, and she'd always secretly want to blurt out everything.
The only person who'd come closest to being 'her friend' in that sense was Weeping Willow, but truthfully Anastasia rarely saw her and couldn't even tell her much. Her mom was too dangerous, and Willow was too weak; There was no guarantee she'd never blab anything. So even Willow wasn't really her friend Though, Anastasia realized, she was Willow's friend. Which was close; at least someone needed her and liked her.
But no, Anastasia would never have true friends, and she suddenly understood. that And that... that was sort of sad. But maybe if she really was resigned to that fact, then it made sense to learn how to have acquaintances. Maybe that would help her feel less alone. Maybe. If she was careful and didn't ever give into the temptation to say everything. She didn't want to be the one to expose her family ever again.
After sometime, a smile quirked at Anastasia's lips, and she shook her head thoughtfully. How was it possible that she wanted to be entirely alone, with no questions and no oversight, but simultaneously felt lonely? Teenagerhood was frustrating and weird.