Slate
Member
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t what actually happened. Lapis expected to just run down to the shelter for a few minutes, just to check on a complaint about seeing one of the abusive husbands hanging around. If they were, she’d make them regret it. It was her job to personally manage these locations, although she was the Executive Director of the charity itself. She liked personally working in the shelters. They were places she wished had existed when she had been a teenager, when Matthias–
No. She wasn’t thinking about that, ever. Not in a million years would she ever dredge up those memories. She looked ahead of her and instead focused on the looks she was getting from the corners of eyes and sometimes straight on. It helped her feel in control, knowing that people wanted her, but that she could actively choose who touched her. It was a power that let her move past her own trauma and continue going.
She sauntered, not walked, down the street. The northern location of the local Crystal shelters was close to the Diamond, meaning she could always just tag out at the bar with Hematite and make her way down the street a few blocks to the shelter. As her heeled boots clattered down the sidewalk, the door to the unassuming building appeared. There was a mural painted across the front, a beautiful swirl of colors in a pattern of crystals. It was subtle, with no sign, but if you knew what it was, you knew.
The places were subtle intentionally. The fewer people who found them, outside the people they meant to attract, the better. The more safe their women and children would be. Between that and the fact that they provided Stonewall security no one who wasn’t supposed to be in the shelter ever got in.
That was why she was baffled by what happened next.
She nodded to the two guards, in their secretive positions near the building, in their dressed-down clothes, and she flashed her badge as she walked past. They simply nodded at her, letting her pass. Her short skirt swayed, and she could feel both their eyes tracing her fishnet-covered legs. A deep breath let her feel finally in control again, just before she pushed the door open. Originally, she was going to go to the security office and review outside footage. Originally.
Then she saw him.
It was like seeing a ghost, but one that was wrong. His hair was only brown, without the blonde bleached underlayer. The hair was still choppy, and still fell over his thick but well-cared-for brows. His honey-colored eyes were softer than she ever remembered them being. His tattoos were missing as well as his piercings. He was dressed in a way she had never seen him dressed before. And for a moment, her heart lept as she looked at him.
Malachite.
Then, as she watched him, unable to move, as he interacted with a young teenage girl, she noticed the way he moved and spoke. It wasn’t him, Mal. It was someone wearing his face. It moved in ways she’d never seen it move before, and made expressions she didn’t know. In an instant, she felt rage coil in her chest. Rage like she hadn’t felt since Obsidian had come back from Columbus.
She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to respond to this. So she did the first thing that came to her. She ducked around the corner and waited, hoping that she would see him leave and be able to follow him. To do what… she wasn’t really sure. But she would do something.
