Chapter Text
Aubrey sat alone on the couch, her body covered by a thin blanket. It wasn't exactly a bed, but she was long used to it by now. The way the springs sagged under her body weight indicated the feeling was mutual. The living room was dark, the only light coming from a dim lamp on the far side of the room. Everyone always 'forgot' to turn it off before they went to bed. It wasn't much illumination, but it reflected nicely off the glass table in front of her. A small courtesy by the universe.
Rain poured onto the street outside, battering the windows of the house. She watched as the water fell in waves across the concrete, strange patterns dancing like sunlight on a pool floor. The sheer level of precipitation was honestly a bit absurd, akin to something out of an average cyberpunk movie. She didn't exactly mind, though. She'd always found the sound of the droplets hitting the roof soothing. It reminded her of her old attic, ironically. Sure, it couldn't really be called a bedroom, but when listening to the rain as she fell asleep, it had always felt like the one place in that house she was safe.
It wasn't like she could sleep right now, though. Still, the least she could do was avoid waking up Kim and Vance upstairs.
Silently, Aubrey shifted her legs onto the floor, tossing aside the blanket into a heap on one end of the couch. She slowly rose to her feet, tiptoeing away towards the kitchen. She wasn't hungry, but maybe eating something would somehow make her brain more amicable to sleeping. The logic wasn't exactly sound, but the nearest clock said it was seventeen minutes to two in the morning, so she didn't exactly care.
Making her way to the fridge, she grabbed the handle, pulled outwards, and was momentarily blinded by the sudden light. However, the contents inside proved immensely disappointing. Nothing but raw ingredients lined the shelves. Avocados, grapefruits, a carton of eggs, a tub of blueberries... did this woman ever have leftovers from whatever excessively healthy diet she'd set herself on this month? Then again, she meticulously kept something like over twenty bonsai trees alive and trimmed. Chances are, she probably knew how to prepare the exact amount of food necessary to satisfy her hunger every time she ate. This was why Aubrey preferred staying with their dad.
"Not like I was hungry anyway..." Aubrey grumbled to herself as she snuck back out into the living room. Except-no, she couldn't just... she'd gotten up and everything. Inches from the couch, she turned around and headed back into the kitchen, opening the fridge to find the same unrefined mass of healthy eating. So she turned around again, and was about to finally flop onto the cushions in exhaustion... before, once again, she turned around and went back to the kitchen. This cycle continued for a few minutes, the courtesies expected of being a night owl quickly forgotten as she paced a trench through the floor of the house. Unsurprising, then, that when she closed the fridge door for probably the fortieth time, she was met with an exceptionally groggy Kim staring back at her.
Aubrey just stood there for a moment, hunched over and equally disheveled, before finally speaking up.
"Shoot, Kim, did I wake you up or something?" She asked, rubbing her neck awkwardly. "My bad, man. I'll try to be quieter next time." She had no intention of fulfilling such a promise, of course. It was the thought that counted, right?
"No, no, ish' fine," Kim waved dismissively, her tired voice slightly slurred. "Vance was snorin' like a friggin' air raid siren anyway. Ya just gave me a reason to get up." She let out a loud yawn, leaning against the wall for support. Her usual blue hoodie was only halfway on, the upper portions hanging loosely off her body and leaving her shoulders exposed to the cold air of the house.
"You trying out a new look here or just not bothering fix your clothing at two in the morning?" Aubrey snarked playfully, narrowly suppressing a yawn from herself. As if on cue, she immediately noticed pink's face turn a shade pinker. Well, maybe it had actually already been that colour when she'd came downstairs. Aubrey wasn't exactly paying close attention.
"...do ya like it?" Kim finally asked, clearly now very self-conscious.
"Eh, sure," Aubrey answered. "Look, I'm not the boss of you. Even if you keep referring to me as such, heh." She'd never understood why her whole friend group kept on insisting on calling her their leader. Well, Hero didn't, but she always just assumed that came from him being older than her. He wouldn't be Hero without casual ageism...
"Thanks, boss!" Kim said, immediately reinforcing the nickname Aubrey had just discredited. "See, this... this ish' why're a real one, Aubs. Always got that... eye fer fashion." She stumbled over, placing an elbow on Aubrey's shoulder playfully, quietly chuckling. Aubrey couldn't help but snicker a bit herself, before suddenly stopping as her mind made an unsettling connection. Kim's behavior, gait, speech... she'd chalked it up to just simple tiredness initially, but...
"Kim, are you... drunk? Don't tell me you seriously..." she paused, not bothering to finish her sentence when her bestie's suddenly guilty expression spoke a thousand words. "Goddammit, Kim. I swear, I go to all the trouble of leaving, and it still follows me here."
"Aubs, I'm sorry, I jus... it was late, and I was bored, and I didn' even have much, I swear-" Kim's train of excuses was cut off by a slap to the cheek by Aubrey.
"You don't get to say that, Kim!" Aubrey shouted, voice clearly pained. "You went through the same months of legal bullshit I did. You and I both whined endlessly to a pair of already divorced parents until they caved. You went out of your way to help me, and now you're stabbing both of us in the back. How long have you been hiding this from me, Kim? From everyone else? Or was this just you being impulsive tonight? C'mon, answer me here." She waited for Kim to try and come up with another excuse, only to be met with silence.
"That's what I thought. Is this because I forced you to stop stealing taffy or something? If that's true, I would've let you and Vance terrorize that crazy shopkeeper all you wanted. Do I need to start checking all my friends for illegal shit? Should I make sure Mikhael hasn't been making weed brownies in his family's bakery? Should I check that oversized white shirt Hero always wears for coke dust? No wonder Mari won't ever leave her house, she's cooped up in there huffing paint all day! Friggin' hell, man..." she trailed off, storming past Kim and into the living room.
Why couldn't life just work out for her? She'd found her footing again, even if it had taken a hundred prayers to Paul the saint and a hundred calls to Saul the lawyer. She'd built herself a new group of true companions out of the ashes of her old, even if none of them were quite right in the head. She'd done her best to uplift and give back to those around her, even if her success was clearly varying. She'd taken up softball with Mari's old bat, even if she was by far the worst player on her team. By all accounts, she'd done everything she could right. She'd moved on.
So why didn't she feel that way?
...
She needed to clear her head. She made a beeline for the door, snatching a large, pink umbrella from beside it. She'd take a nice walk around town, movie rain be damned. Quickly pulling her raincoat over her pajamas, she grabbed her softball bat from right next to where her umbrella had just been. Faraway was generally a calm and quiet place, but she wasn't one to take chances, especially with Kim having reminded her what lay beneath its facade.
After opening the door, Aubrey was immediately met with just how truly loud the storm was. To think it sounded had deafening inside. She preemptively stuck the umbrella outside and opened it, angling it so she could step out without being personally bathed in the relentless downpour. Once she was fully out of the doorway, she quickly shut the door behind her, hopefully preventing any rain from getting inside. She silently pumped her fist and smirked. Nailed it.
With the immediate complications of trying to go outside during an active storm dealt with, she began her walk. She slowly walked past her neighbour's house. Despite the heavy rain, she could somewhat make out a faint orange glow coming from one of the top windows. She sighed, hoping the kid who lived there wasn't still studying at this ungodly hour. At least Aubrey wasn't alone with a damn drunk in her insomnia. If only she could use it for something more productive than existential dread or extremely basic cardio.
"Damnit, Aubrey, you came outside to stop worrying, not to come up with new ways of doing it," she chastised herself under her breath. She forced her legs to keep moving and rounded the corner, heading for the park up north. The comically massive downpour was starting to let up a bit, but it was still loud enough to drown out much of anything else, internal or external. As she approached the park, she could see clearly just how much the soft ground was turning to mud. It was akin to how the storm was also definitely pounding her brain into mush, and she was not at all concerned for how the park's resident homeless population was faring in this kind of weather. Nope, not at all. No thoughts, head full of rainwater.
Another fun fact about the mud was how she absolutely wouldn't be able to walk through it without slipping and coating herself in dirt. Therefore, she continued her trek to Faraway Plaza. The secret lake was a contentious territory, so whenever they preferred somewhere less risky, Aubrey and her friends would hang around the plaza, particularly by the fountain. She had Mikhael to thank for that one, he'd always had an eye for sweet spots like that.
The plaza itself was now desolate, the local cat population displaced by the downpour. None of the stores were open this late, not even Hobbeez or Gino's. It was an odd sight, seeing the place so barren, save for one or two forgotten cars. If... Kim... was here, she would have probably suggested breaking into Othermart to steal something. While Aubrey wasn't exactly the biggest fan of the store itself, be it that Othermart was a multinational corporation with little to no local competition in Faraway or the big scandal a decade ago where it was discovered they'd knowingly imported tainted beef, she wasn't about to commit a felony at two in the morning out of boredom.
With nothing to really do but stand there in the pouring rain, Aubrey turned around, walking past the park once more. Absentmindedly, she went a bit further than necessary, using the farther crossing instead of the direct way home. Perhaps she was unconsciously disappointed with the wet emptiness of the town and sought to prolong her walk for as long as possible. The storm had noticeably lessened by now, becoming a more typical downpour. The added visual clarity let Aubrey notice the fire hydrant on her side of the street. Yes, surely she'd been subconsciously guided over here to admire such a wonderful, tiny, uninteresting thing. After spending about a solid minute hunched over and staring at it, most of which was probably an exhaustion-induced microsleep, Aubrey finally stood up straight and turned right.
She really wasn't sure where her legs were taking her now. She had no business on this street, especially with most of the town hopefully asleep. Mikhael would be in bed, she didn't intend on talking to his strange siblings at this hour, Hero would most likely also be in bed, and no way in hell was she talking to Cris or Kel. But, as she walked by the second to last house, she realized why she had walked over. How ironic, that she'd come out to clear her thoughts, and yet here she was, at the place from which they all ultimately stemmed.
She'd always liked Sunny and Mari's house. The walls were a nice colour, the currently very drenched picnic basket that they always left out for the milkman was a nostalgic shade of red, it all came together nicely. It was an ideal suburban home, a place of fond memories and nothing else. The worst tragedy that could ever possibly happen here would be a stubborn stain on a piece of carpet. And yet, fate had provided a much bigger stain, one that left a mark on the house itself, no, the whole of Faraway.
She still missed him so much. How he'd listen to her on the swings, let everyone hang out in the treehouse, give her what was left of his plate at lunch when her old parents hadn't remembered to feed her. He'd always put others, but especially her, before himself. She just wished he had remembered his own wellbeing in that selflessness. Maybe then he wouldn't have... left her the way he did. Maybe his sister, the one she practically called her own, wouldn't be still stuck inside the safety of this stupid house. If only they hadn't both chosen to abandon her in their own special ways.
She knocked on the door. She didn't know why. Maybe she somehow hoped that a single bash of knuckle against wood would defy four years of utter nothing. Statistics was never her strong suit, after all. She stood there for a while, silent, listening to the rain patter against the concrete. Eventually, she sighed, straightened her umbrella, and began to finally, properly walk back to her intended destination. Aside from this brief attempt at resolving her own lacking ability to sleep, today would be just another day for Aubrey. So would tomorrow. And the day after. And the one after that one too. All the same.
If it wasn't for the rain and her own exhaustion making things indistinct, Aubrey could have sworn she heard a door creak open before slamming shut as she left the driveway.