Chapter Text
When Jay leaves, Ras yells.
He punches a hole in the wall just inches from cinders head, and that’s enough to send him running after the lightning ninja.
And Jordana thinks to herself, I could never leave. What reason would I have to? But that’s before Ras’ anger shifts to her—and suddenly there’s a table being flung at her, hitting her so hard in the stomach she thinks she might throw up. She wills her crystal ball to tell her where cinder’s hiding, where jays hiding.
“I’m not gonna welcome you with open arms or whatever, but I think we are all seriously messed up people and it would be better if we didn’t have our respective mental breakdowns around strangers.”
That’s what jay had said when she showed up. He said it to both her and cinder—but something inside tells her he isn’t just being a prick—he’s being a prick that cares.
And then she has her own room that she’s forced to share with cinder, in a stupid little house that they’d found together. And jays hair is really fricken long, and cinder keeps trying to get her into skin care. And she rolls her eyes and tells him, “just because you inherited powers that make your skin turn grey and flakey doesn’t mean you can force me into your torture ritual.”
But she’s dragged into it anyway, and now the three of them do mundane shit—like play board games and eating together, like buying food and yelling across the house and making fun of each other. It feels normal, and correct and right.
“Alright so toothpaste, ramen packets, apples, blueberries if they have em, carrots, potatoes, and lamb. Is that everything?”
“Don’t forgot Jordanas gross milk and white chocolate mix bar.” Cinder adds unhelpfully, smirking slightly as he peels the labels off old bottles.
“Don’t forgot cinders soap.” She picks a piece up, flicking at him. It sticks to his ear and he rubs against it aggressively.
“Are you saying I smell bad?”
“Well, you’re not exactly denying it.”
He reaches to pull at her hair, but it stopped when Jay throws the notepad at his face. Cinder snatches it up and hastily scrawls stupid chocolate that Jordy likes across the bottom.
She makes a tsk sound.
They make it to the market, and Jay tasks her with buying soup broth while he checks out their seed area.
“We don’t even have a pea trellis. Or a gardening area.”
“Well maybe we should.”
“Yeah Jordy, don’t you know that home grown things taste better?”
Jay knocked the shorter on the head lightly with his fist.
How completely normal.
She looks back at the two. If I squint hard enough, Jay looks a bit like a woman.
She bumps into a stall and makes a sort of hissing noise, before turning to see a little kid staring at her.
She hisses again, and the kind scampers off, hair bouncing as she runs.
What was I supposed to get again?