#elghostrider

They had only unpacked the couch. All around the apartment--which wasn’t exactly large, as prices kept surging, year after year in San Francisco--their boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, taped up and labeled in Sharpie. They had moved just in time; Jude started her new job the next morning, and, hanging on the fridge (which had been there when they arrived) was the handwritten list Jude had made of all the rodeos in the Bay Area and any other jobs in the field. 

Now, as she sat on the couch, pinned to Cam’s side, she stared out over their new home and sighed in contentment. She had moved in with him back in Texas, but this was the first place was theirs together, that they’d chosen together. The engagement ring on her finger glittered as the sun streamed through the fog and in through the kitchen window. 

Where had he come from? Padme held a shaking hand to her forehead, but the wound wasn’t bad--maybe a little bruising, but no blood. She’d survive. And the battle had only just begun. “I’m alright,” she snapped, pushing his hands away. He was only trying to help, but she had not wanted his help in a very long time. “Don’t touch me.”

Flashback to Simpler Times || @elghostrider

Jude blushed and attempted to shove Cam out of the bathroom without messing up her mascara. They’d been living together for only a week now, but she’d managed, in all that time, not to ever let him see her without her makeup–only taking it off at night after the lights were off. But now she was barefaced and sitting, topless, in front of her mirror, her hair tied up in her towel, another one around her waist. “You weren’t supposed to be home,” she complained, but she was smiling all the same. 

Painful Stuff || @elghostrider

His life. Jude had never wanted his life–not to own it, not to hold it in her hands, only to be a part of it. She’d wanted to share it with him, to  be a piece of his future, to be his partner for the next adventure. She had wanted to share the same last name. Slowly, she set down her staff, looking at the dead player before her–her first kill. Her cursor flickered from green to orange. She had had to do it, had been left no choice--it was Cam or the player attacking him, and she’d made her choice.