#thread; gift

- on the 1st of may 2021 

- at Omer’s apartment 

Ginny drops like a spider into Omer’s apartment. Click swish thud. Legs first, out of the city air into the comforting embrace of his space. A black gift bag dangles from her right arm. Perhaps overkill but all Ginny had was time on her hands and a desire to please Omer. Someone who had shown her kindness again and again. Someone who didn’t ask her questions she couldn’t answer. Someone who death had punished senselessly.  

She unfolds herself from the crouch she’d landed in, gift bag sliding down into her hand. Pepper, Omer had said, and Ginny had thought, how different could this pepper be from regular pepper? But she knew she would think it was magic the moment Omer cooked with it. 10 bags of peanut flavoured cheetos too and this one kind of chocolate. Why not she’d thought. She was already in Turkey. Turns out 500 grams of pepper from one very specific place in Istanbul is a hard thing to come by on short notice in London. 

Ginny turns to Omer and gestures to the bag with a flourish like a magician before a trick. “How are you?” She says, “I bought you a present.” 

     The sun was setting just as Hitch managed to make it back to what was now a place she could call home. The thought was a little strange, all things considered; it wasn’t as if she hadn’t ever had a home before. But the last years of training had made her feel displaced. The places she had called home in the months and years before the military–well, they would never feel like home again. Not after everything she’d seen and experienced.

The women’s barracks during training...they had never felt like home, either.

But Stohess: it was starting to feel that way, familiarity sneaking into her vocabulary whenever she had to return to the building that held her room: “I’m gonna head back–”

She always wanted to say home.

In the chaos of her room there was a flower vase that almost always had a relatively fresh flower in it, and next to it was a pile of books she had read until the pages were worn.

She still felt a measure of dread every time she approached the door, every time it creaked open to reveal a room that was empty but for the mess she’d left in it upon her early-morning departure to patrol the city streets with Marlowe or Boris or whoever had been assigned to her that day. But every day she couldn’t help but notice that the feeling had lessened a little more. Perhaps in time she wouldn’t feel it at all anymore.

The last rays of light nearly blinded her as she stepped into the mess hall, half out of breath still from her run across half the city. The room was crowded with those who had come at the last dinner bell, but she ignored the food and scoured the tables for Marlowe’s familiar face. He was, of course, at the usual spot, uniform still looking pressed and neat. He hadn’t noticed her entrance, which instantly relieved her. Her own uniform was thoroughly rumpled and her hair a mess; she swiped her sleeve over her face and tried to straighten her hair before she headed over.

Grinning, she all but flung herself into the spot beside him, knee bumping up against the side of his leg.