Catch and Release
Aubrey sat on the edge of the hotel bed and flicked up her thumb, lighting up her first cigarette in five years, three months and two days.
The first drag made her cough worse than she had since her teen years, and she sat tapping ash off and pounding her chest for a minute and some before finally just snubbing the cigarette out.
She pulled her little brown suitcase closer to her on the bed and began to shuffle through her things. A person didn't acquire very much in the way of personal belongings when they were bed ridden for half a decade but the medical staff at Star Labs had done what they could. She had been given socks, underthings, a few dresses that were anything but what she would pick for herself - shapeless, ugly, and homely - and a small bag of toiletries that had been trashed and replaced the second she'd found a 24 hour Walgreens.
Unpacking it all took about five minutes.
Aubrey wasn't sure if that made her more relieved or more upset.
She'd lost a bit of weight (her muscle tone was gone to shit from being prone so long)but those things aside looking at herself in the mirror there wasn't much of an outward change. Her face held her youth better now than before she'd been given her powers, that much she knew, but she FELT weary in a way that only age brought - eyes dark with the sort of depression that came with loss. She hadn't felt so aged since the reality of turning thirty had hit her like a ton of bricks and she had set about accepting it with a tub of ice cream and some serious considering of botox).
It hadn't sunk in properly yet that five years had slid by her. She was still absorbing the fact that Bush was no longer in office, forget that her home, her things, had all had to be packed up and stored, some of them sold. Her house wasn't her house anymore. Her life wasn't her life anymore.
Truthfully she hadn't even been sure where she would go when she walked out the front doors.
It had crossed her mind to call him at least a dozen times, but each time she stopped short, crippled by embarassment, absurdity... fear. J'onn had been at her back when no one else had, but that was then and this was now and between the two stretched a few short days of terror and years of sudden silence.
She eyed the little prepaid phone as she pulled it out of the suitcase, flipping it open and fingering the speed dial key for one of the two numbers programmed in. Star Labs' lines for discharged patients, in case things went sour medically, and the call-in like to the JLA Watchtower. If anybody knew anything about what had happened to her property and her clothes and all of that it would probably be them...
Aubrey flicked her fingers on the side of the phone, opening and closing the address book entry before finally hitting the dial button. What were the chances that J'onn was manning the damn call-in line anyway? She just needed a number and a key for a storage locker, probably.
The first drag made her cough worse than she had since her teen years, and she sat tapping ash off and pounding her chest for a minute and some before finally just snubbing the cigarette out.
She pulled her little brown suitcase closer to her on the bed and began to shuffle through her things. A person didn't acquire very much in the way of personal belongings when they were bed ridden for half a decade but the medical staff at Star Labs had done what they could. She had been given socks, underthings, a few dresses that were anything but what she would pick for herself - shapeless, ugly, and homely - and a small bag of toiletries that had been trashed and replaced the second she'd found a 24 hour Walgreens.
Unpacking it all took about five minutes.
Aubrey wasn't sure if that made her more relieved or more upset.
She'd lost a bit of weight (her muscle tone was gone to shit from being prone so long)but those things aside looking at herself in the mirror there wasn't much of an outward change. Her face held her youth better now than before she'd been given her powers, that much she knew, but she FELT weary in a way that only age brought - eyes dark with the sort of depression that came with loss. She hadn't felt so aged since the reality of turning thirty had hit her like a ton of bricks and she had set about accepting it with a tub of ice cream and some serious considering of botox).
It hadn't sunk in properly yet that five years had slid by her. She was still absorbing the fact that Bush was no longer in office, forget that her home, her things, had all had to be packed up and stored, some of them sold. Her house wasn't her house anymore. Her life wasn't her life anymore.
Truthfully she hadn't even been sure where she would go when she walked out the front doors.
It had crossed her mind to call him at least a dozen times, but each time she stopped short, crippled by embarassment, absurdity... fear. J'onn had been at her back when no one else had, but that was then and this was now and between the two stretched a few short days of terror and years of sudden silence.
She eyed the little prepaid phone as she pulled it out of the suitcase, flipping it open and fingering the speed dial key for one of the two numbers programmed in. Star Labs' lines for discharged patients, in case things went sour medically, and the call-in like to the JLA Watchtower. If anybody knew anything about what had happened to her property and her clothes and all of that it would probably be them...
Aubrey flicked her fingers on the side of the phone, opening and closing the address book entry before finally hitting the dial button. What were the chances that J'onn was manning the damn call-in line anyway? She just needed a number and a key for a storage locker, probably.