Chapter Text
The air outside Alicent’s window is charged with the warm caress of the midsummer evening. The back garden is lit up by the orange glow of the outdoor lights. Once upon a time, this same setting would’ve contained multitudes, bouts of laughter emanating from a much younger crowd and the soft rhythm of whichever tune was in at the moment. Now, the outside remains empty, devoid of any excitement, of any tension lacing the air from the charged looks of the teens.
It’s January now. A new year. A year in which any failure and disappointment have been left in the past. But somehow, they still cling to her skin like the smell of onion on the cutting board and knife. This time, though, it feels less. Less consuming, less enraging, less anything, really. Because, truth be told, despite this being a new year, and despite the air being warm, and despite the chance at new friendships, she isn’t really feeling anything. Numb.
Maybe the overwhelming anxiety that came with last year’s college applications, assignment deadlines, and graduation would’ve been better than this cavernous pit of nothing digging its claws into her gut. She loves reading, but recently it feels like a chore. She loves listening to music, but she can’t help the pit of dread growing and growing and growing. And she loves sleeping. She loves her bed. She loves nighttime. She doesn’t anymore. Everything’s bad. The days are too long. She can’t sleep. Won’t sleep. She cries and hurts. And in the end, she does nothing. Because she thinks it’s all for nothing. Because isn’t it, really?
Anyways, all that to say that she could’ve had another year of a full garden if not for what happened last year. Doesn’t matter anyways, really. Because she doesn’t want that anymore. She didn’t want it either the last few years, but she wants it even less this year !
It doesn’t matter anyways because she has a motivation letter to finish writing for an application she doesn’t care about. What is one supposed to say as motivation to motivate the application team if she doesn’t care to do so? This train of thought is exactly why she hasn’t made any progress. She keeps ruminating on how insanely stupid this whole practice is and then ends up making herself mad.
Whatever. She just needs to get it done at this point because she has two days before the due date, and her parents are gonna want to know how far along she is, and she isn’t far at all. But whatever.
It’s currently 9:13, and everyone in her house is in their rooms. And usually, she hates going out. Which in itself is a lie, she recognizes because actually, she loves going out. She loved it in Egypt. She loves it with her music loud in the car by herself. So she does love it. She just has this habit of saying she hates something she isn’t confident or is apprehensive about doing because then, if she isn’t able to, the letdown will be less sudden. Whether she does this for herself or for others, she doesn’t know.
Yes, she’s aware. Something is likely wrong with her. She’s working on figuring it out with her therapist, thank you very much.
She closes her PC, not bothering to save her progress nor turn off the screen, stands from her chair, and grabs her phone and jacket. She doesn’t bother looking at herself in her vanity mirror and heads for the door of her room. She closes it gently before heading across the hall to the bathroom. Behind the door, she grabs her shoes. Slips them in and zips them. As she leaves the bathroom, she catches sight of herself in the mirror hung over the faucets opposite her, sees the little piece of hair hanging off her forehead in guise of bangs, cringes, and rushes out the door and down the stairs right by the corner of the bathroom.
The wooden stairs creak slightly under the slight weight of her footfalls despite her efforts to walk down gently.
Thankfully, her mother doesn’t ask who it is. Whether she doesn’t hear or doesn’t bother to ask matters very little. The moment she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she walks the short distance to the door and slips out into the night.
She hopes she didn’t remove her house keys from her jacket pocket as an afterthought.
Quickly, she reaches the residential gate keeping all the houses in the residence closed and opens the smaller gate to leave the safety of the familiar.
She hasn’t done this before and hopes she doesn’t get abducted the first time she goes out alone at night. She hasn’t told anyone she’d be going out nor where she would be going, so the chance that she doesn’t get found is at an all-time high. In her defense, she doesn’t know where she’s going either.
She quickly makes the jog to the nearest train station, walks down the stairs to the customer service booth, and buys a metro card. Without much care about her destination, she takes a picture of the metro map lines and scans her card through the smart gates to access the other side.
Once past the gate, she looks to her left at the stairs leading upstairs to the train platform, raises her eyes higher towards the sign indicating which terminal it’ll lead to, and turns her head to her right, where she can see a similar setup but to a different terminal. Without much thought, she starts towards the stairs to her right and heads up them. The last step opens up to an empty train track with, on either side of it, a lengthy platform adorned with benches to wait for the train.
She walks towards an empty bench in the far corner of the platform and takes a seat on the cold metal of the bar.
Alicent doesn’t have to wait long before she hears the telltale sign of the train coming up towards her. She is up on her feet and waiting to the right of the train door opening before it even comes to a stop. She darts her head from left to right to observe the other passengers as she bites her bottom lip. There aren’t many people. Most of them, she deduces, are going home from a late night at the office or heading out for a night out. It is a Friday, afterall.
The doors in front of her open, and she waits for the few people inside to finish loading off to enter the cold interior of the train. She can feel the AC even under her jacket and her tights covering her legs under her skirt. The knee-high boots she has decided to wear help against the cold.
She looks to her right and takes the nearest seat she can find. Even if she could sit literally anywhere due to the emptiness of the wagon, save for a lone figure sitting across from her bench, head leaned against the glass window behind her, and arms crossed over her torso as her one hand is holding a phone with earphone cables plugged into it and the two buds of it are plugged into her ears.
The train starts towards its next stop, jostling Alicent quite a bit. Once it goes steady, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone. She lowers the brightness of the device by habit and goes into her books app to pull up the previous self-help book she was reading. It’s the third one she has tried getting into in all of the first three weeks of this new year. Suffice to say, she is failing grandly at it.
A few minutes into trying to feel some hope for herself at the words on her screen, Alicent is roused from her task at the sound of a groan diagonal to her. She shifts her eyes towards the source of the noise and is met with the sight of the silver-haired girl with a disbelieving look on her pale face delivered to the phone between her hands as if inconvenienced from whatever she is looking at in her phone. Now that she is looking at her better, Alicent can admire her long and sharp nose, her defined lips, and her light blue eyes, which are somehow… staring right back at her ?
Alicent’s eyes widen a fraction of a second before she ducks her head back to her phone and tries to finish reading this passage about self-esteem.
She hears a light chuckle from the same place she first heard the groan and frowns her brows as she lifts her head back up to the girl again. Her hair is cut short. A choppy layered cut, almost a shag but as if done with very blunt scissors. She doesn’t dwell long on her haircut and looks down to her eyes and her quirked eyebrow.
Alicent’s frown doesn’t ease as she observes the stranger.
Alicent locks eyes with the stranger, and the stranger lets out a small chuckle.
“I love your bangs.”
“What?”
“Your bangs. They’re rad. A bold choice too.”
Alicent narrows her eyes.
“Right.”
“No, I’m serious. I wish I was as brave as you.”
Alicent’s nerve ticking, her eye twitches.
The stranger stares with a confused look.
“Did I say something? I mean, I was just complimenting your ban—”
She is cut off by Alicent gritting:
“Can you shut up about my bangs for one minute?”
Startled, the silver-haired girl opens her mouth to say something but nothing comes out, simply a squeaky:
“What?”
“I mean, I get it, okay? My hair’s fucked up. I hear about it enough at home. I don’t need some random stranger pointing it out too. And anyways, I really don’t think you should be the ruling authority in bad haircuts.”
Alicent huffs in a single breath as she feels her face warm.
“Excuse you?”
“No, you excuse you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What the hell is wrong with me? I was just saying that I liked your bangs, jeez.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“As a matter of fact, I am not.”
Alicent huffs.
The stranger quiets but not for long. She doesn’t relent.
“Listen, I’m sorry, okay? I just thought your bangs were nice, and I wanted to tell you. I get how it might come off as rude with my wording, but I really didn’t mean it that way.”
The girl looks at Alicent and frowns for a bit before saying:
“And I’m sorry for interrupting your reading. I realize that a random stranger on a train at night talking nonsense might be slightly unwelcome.”
She looks some more at Alicent, a trace of what Alicent would venture to guess, a small smile pulling at the corner of her lip.
“Anyways, this is my stop. Sorry again. And I hope you enjoy your book. You seemed a bit… eh… distracted earlier.”
The girl scratches slightly at the back of her neck and hesitates a bit before stepping off the train and out the doors. Into the train station platform and out of Alicent’s life forever. Thankfully.