#interaction.atlas

She paused at the top of a particularly steep incline, hands pressed against her thighs as she caught her breath, feeling every single bead of sweating burning on her skin under the early afternoon sun. Maggie was with Asher and Sage had taken the initiative of asking Atlas if he'd go on a run with her, desperately needing to clear her head and that was always in the form of spending time in the mountains above Providence Peak. In the past, it would be Springsteen right at her side, trekking up the rocky pathways to a view that was unbeatable and absolutely breathtaking, but the years had taken their toll on the Bernese Mountain Dog and trips like this were no longer manageable for him. Atlas was a good substitute, eager and able to keep up just like a canine companion would. "You know, you're only keeping up because your legs are like, twice the size of mine, right?" A broken chuckle fell from her lips between breaths and she glanced up at him, squinting in the sun. "Knock a few inches off, then try to keep up."

As soon as she saw it was her brother who sat atop the bench in the dunk tank, Molly had to take her shot and she was willing to give her entire paycheck that week to make it. Thankfully, it had only taken two throws to completely submerge the man that she shared an unfortunate parental lineage with thanks to her skills as an all-star baseball player when she was a kid. She laughed loudly and handed her three extra throws off to the kid behind her before making her way closer to the dunk tank as Atlas climbed his way out of the water and back onto the bench. "Guess your girl didn't do too much damage to my pitching arm after all," She quipped, holding up the arm that had previously been encased in a cast, stretching her fingers out a few times for emphasis. She would've made a joke about how it paid to have a dad who played catch with her when she was a kid, but she wasn't a complete monster. "Tell me, is it as cold as it looks? If you were worried about how to stop your overpopulation of this city, I'm sure you won't have to worry anymore."

Go for a run. It was on the list of things Emmy normally doesn’t do that she should to embrace change and get out of her comfort zone that her therapist helped her write during their first session. Honestly, going to a therapist was number one on the list of things she just didn’t do and that was so exhausting she really just deserved a break from the rest of the list, right? Unfortunately, her therapist didn’t think so and she figured it was a little unorthodox to switch to another professional based on the face that she didn’t want to do the homework she went to said professional for in the first place, so instead, Emmy found herself on a trail outside of the city, shorts already chafing and sweat droplets reaching parts of her body she hadn’t even known existed until that moment, ready to just give into the fact that maybe she was stuck in a toxic round-a-bout in life where she’d always just keep going back to her ex-girlfriend and continue to whine about people always leaving her. Just about to concede, she turned around to head back down the trail when she was met with a face that looked familiar, yet she just couldn’t place it, so she passed by the man without nothing more than a sorry. She only made it a few feet before the recognition pulled on her nerves and she knew not being able to place the face would bother her long after she left the trail. “Hey! Excuse me, sorry, this is super weird, but I know you, right?”

It was rare, for this particular day to come and Cora actually show up for it. Out of the four times a year it was offered to her and the twelve years in total it had been offered, she felt like she could count on her hands the number of times she made it. Granted, a third of those were spent in college, getting a useless degree, and another spent traveling the world and one more spent testifying and serving a year’s sentence on the inside. But... there weren’t any excuses in the world that could justify missing the chance to spend a little time with the son she had given up over a decade ago and she knew that. Maybe that was why Cora felt the nerves swimming in her stomach, even long after she rustled Jonah’s thick unruly hair and watched him run off to show his parents the book he had picked out with his friend. A soft smile curved on her lips as she lifted a hand with a gentle wave toward the two that had given Jonah the family he deserved, the one she couldn’t have all those years ago. One that she still wasn’t willing to give. 

For most of the meeting, she hung back in the distance, watching the young boy build with his after school LEGO club, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he picked that interest up from her dad while he baked. The thought caused an amused chuckle to leave her lips, her attention caught up on a familiar face just a few feet from where she stood. Her feet were moving before she could stop them, noticing the man holding a tiny blonde, apparently not a mini version of his girlfriend even though they looked nearly identical, while watching an older girl play not far from him. “Damn, one more and you’ve got enough for a band.”

The last thing Sage ever expected was to go on vacation in an attempt to see her dad for the first time in a few years and instead, come back to Providence Peak with her newborn daughter. As though the quickly impending birth date hadn’t already been causing panic to run through her veins and crowd her chest, giving birth in a different state, without anything going according to plan, definitely caused the panic to set in. The past few years left her with the ability to hide exactly how much she was freaking out and for a little, the blonde had even denied to herself that the contractions were even happening. Her due date wasn’t for another month, she told herself. It’s just false labor, she added. Then her dad insisted she go to the hospital and it turned out due dates and false labor didn’t quite matter to the unnamed baby girl inside of her. Just like her dad, she clearly had an agenda all her own.

Even days later, after figuring out a name for the fair-haired newborn, after making her way back to the city with the new addition in tow, Sage was still in disbelief that what happened had actually happened. But Magnolia was there, snuggled in her carseat that she was sure took all three of her hospital visitors an hour to figure out, waiting with the new mom in front of Atlas’ door. She knocked a few times, careful not to startle the baby in the seat in her arms and waited for the door to open, reminded of the first time she stood there, in that exact position, with an ultrasound in place of their baby. Unlike that moment, the second the door open a soft smile curved on her lips at the sight of the man. “Thanks for giving me an excuse to get out of that house, I’m pretty sure if I stared at those walls for another second I was going to go insane,” Sage greeted him with a soft chuckle. “I can’t wait to see what you managed to scrap together for the nursery.” The tease came as she made her way into the house, then she added, “I’m joking, by the way, judging by the amount of onesies Maggie came home with, we all know Kennedy probably did most of the decorating.”

They trailed just slightly after the tinier blonde who insisted or skipping through all of the exhibits, pressing her face to every pane of glass to get a good look at what was inside, looking at a world underwater in innocent fascination. Sage knew they were going to end up taking home some kind of flu or cold, but she didn't have the heart to stop the toddler from touching and looking closely and getting involved with all of what the aquarium had to offer — she just made a mental note to scrub her down with hand sanitizer before they left and pray to whatever gods exist out there that the seasonal colds going around magically skipped their house that week. "Thanks for hanging out with us tonight," the older blonde started, directing her attention toward Atlas as he lumbered along beside her. They barely had the chance to talk over the holidays, let alone find time to spend with their shared daughter. "It's good for her, to see us coexist sometimes. She doesn't have to know that hell froze over because we're somehow hanging out because we chose to for fun."

She spotted the man in the distance, allowing him to get a little closer before she allowed the wiggling toddler in her arms to be placed on the sidewalk, watching her take off toward her father, slowly moving after her until they closed the distance between them, Maggie wrapping her arms around the legs of the much taller man. "Thanks, for meeting me here," Sage greeting him with a soft smile, glancing at the building in front of her that she recognized from Ruby's years of attending. The familiarity of the front entrance alone felt overwhelming, but she planned to smile and power through it for the sake of her daughter, who had been on the waiting list since she was born. She knew the little girl would find herself right at home in the school. Glancing at her watch, she looked back toward Atlas. "We have a few minutes, but we should probably head in a little early. Did you bring everything I mentioned? Your license? The form you needed to fill out?"

She glanced around the area as she turned off her car and stepped out, the instantaneous quiet of the country overtaking her almost immediately, a far cry from the sound of kids outside playing and families barbequing in their backyards in Claret. No sight of a certain blonde's car, which gave her a moment to let a breath fall from her lips and relax. Facing Atlas was enough mental and emotional exhaustion for one day, she'd eventually work her way up to approaching the blonde too. Just maybe not all at once. Popping her trunk, she leaned over the edge, shoving half of her body inside just to reach the worn box that had been shoved all the way to the back, mostly because it hadn't moved from its spot in a decade, never having any reason to until now. The only reason she'd taken it from her dad's trailer was to use it to find her brother when she managed to work up to it, she never actually thought she'd be handing it off to the man. Yet, there she was, box in hand as she slammed her trunk shut and made her way around the house to the back deck the man said he'd be waiting on, and sure enough, there he was. "Your trauma, your choice," Molly started, lifting the shoebox up as she referenced it before dropping it to the patio table in front of Atlas. "Hopefully you have some strong alcohol to go along with it." She brought some other things for him too, photos of her dad as she grew up, taken on a cheap disposable camera, the only reason they were ever developed was thanks to her mom, who seemed to have it all together until she left. Pulling the photos from her back pocket where they'd been shoved, she slid those on the table too. "Just in case you were curious." The top photo stared at them, her with her unruly head of curls barely tamed with a baseball cap and her dad with his mitt right beside her on a dusty school baseball field in the middle of nowhere their wide smiles unmatched. "You tell your parents yet?"