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”Mind if I leave her here? She can be a bit feisty when she’s lonely, but I just need to grab something from in there,” the Calloway said calmly as they stroked the muzzle of his horse affectionately. “Of course, if it’s not too troublesome…” Derek tilted his head carefully at the other before offering a sly grin. “Just don’t tell my father. He’d have a fit knowing I was going out on my own again. And I wouldn’t want this place filling up with guards just yet.”

“ I don’t think they believed me. How unfortunate for them. I told nothing but the truth, but they  wanted to be wrong” Jade replied raising a brow as she watched the person walking away. “ I can’t imagine why anyone would assume I was a liar. Is it my face?” She smirked. 

“You are a woman,” Laurel easily replied. “So maybe it is your face as well. No man is going to trust a woman over his own thinking even if he was not there or had no knowledge on what he is talking about.”

“You would think there’d be plenty of moving companies that 1. have a proper website. 2. have good reviews and 3. aren’t ridiculously overpriced. I mean come on. It’s a hundred for just the truck, ten an hour and it says the standard delivery crew is two, so really that’s twenty. Including rest time. I mean not to be cheap but.. Is this where it’s going? I might as well kidnap every strong person I know or bait them with dinner for a week. I’ll be spending just as much then, for sure.” 

Central Park was buzzing with life today, the warm weather practically forced people out the door so they could enjoy it. Just in case the weather turned again. Spring and Winter seemed to be raging a war this time of year, and the crisp breeze proved winter hadn’t fully lost yet. Perched on a bench with a travel mug in hand, Aerith pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. People watching had always been a hobby of hers but in New York there was so much more to see then back home. And it offered just as many eyes to see them with. Leaning back against the seat, she caught the eye of one of her companions. The black bird was peering out from behind the branches, watching the same way she was. 

Lowering her gaze she took a sip of her tea as she watched the other approach, greeting them with an easy smile of acknowledgement. “Good morning.”

“Hey! Don’t temp fate! With the way things are going, the gates to hell could be opened any day now.” Taking a bite of her food, Josie didn’t like to think about what could happen but felt the need to be prepared for the future. It was a delicate balance that threatened to overwhelm her but she’d managed to keep her wits so far. “Maybe when you get out you and I can train together? I could teach you how to kickass.” Sometimes it helps - training. Building strength physically could help with the mental aspects of coping and dealing with trauma, she knew. 

“Hades can’t wait to have me down there. I am insanely entertaining,” Laurel jokingly teased. “I don’t hate that idea,” Laurel mused. “I usually count running around with the kids as my exercise and manning the bar as a little added bonus but training doesn’t sound terrible. You’ll have to take it easy on me at the start- I wouldn’t put it past me to quit if I got annoyed.”

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“It pains me to smile- haven’t you noticed that by now?” Laurel smirked. It was weird to be joking and actually laughing with Derek rather than yelling at one another or making passive aggressive digs like they had been doing since they had first met. Neither party making a true effort to this one moment and it was weird because had her mother kept some sort of relationship with her then maybe she would have grown up with Derek but that wasn’t the life they had. “Maybe slightly childish but that is all I can manage right now,” she joked. “No problem- it was nice to leave my bed for a while but I should get back before someone berates me for hindering my own recovery but I’ll remember that thing about Dr. Harrison. I don’t want to end back up here at all.”

“Apologies for suggesting happiness existed in your range of emotions,” Derek snorted, before nodding his head at Laurel’s remark on returning to her bed. They probably would never have a relationship like siblings, but it was nice for once to just speak freely, without barbs in their words. He didn’t feel the need to have to defend himself, or hold ill will against his half-sister. Unfamiliar and different, sure. But he was looped up on meds anyways, and they’d both been through enough to warrant some peace. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I don’t run into you here ever again,” he mused, knowing the implications of seeing someone in the hospital. In all his years of residency, he knew that hospital visits didn’t mean good things. Leaning back into his bed, the Calloway felt his eyelids closing on their own, a wave of exhaustion rushing over him before he realized it.

        She nodded in understanding. “There’s always one or two nurses that’ll fall for that.” Wiggling into their hearts and bribing them with giggles and smiles was a something of a hobby for JJ when she was younger, what with all the time she spent lounging around hospital rooms anytime Liam managed to swallow a quarter or get his fingers caught in a door. The manipulation of it all was an artform. The younger bared teeth in a grimace at the mention of her friend’s sibling, but a soft smile soon replaced it. Laurel was a good person, even if she didn’t want to admit it. “You won’t know unless you’re transported to an alternate universe.” In other words, it wasn’t wise to dwell on it. “But something tells me you would have.” She wondered if her conscience would have let her live peacefully had she not.

“Ooh, hot. Maybe I’ll look into that,” Cece wiggled her eyebrows again, soon laughing the idea off. She didn’t feel like these were nice doings, she was reluctant to even show up. She just felt obligated, since she was friends with people who went through all that mess at new year’s. “They really are. I’m dying to leave but I think Derek is in here, too, so I’ll have to visit him. Old friend of mine. I don’t know why I bother being friends with you rich people if all you do is get yourselves into parties targeted by terrorists.”

“It would make me feel better so definitely worth looking into,” Laurel smirked. Though the smirk fell from her face at the mention of a Derek. What were the chances that Cece’s friend and Laurel’s half brother were the same Derek. It was a fairly popular name in comparison but her half brother was on the same floor - next door even - so stopping by on the way wouldn’t be outrageous. Laurel didn’t get into her family drama back when they were a thing because it would edge a fling into something far more serious with confessions like that. “Well I’m not rich so you can continue being friends with me. For now at least- who knows when I will win my fortune. Lottery, counting cards, or a long lost relative will leave all their money to me since the rest of my family are shits,” she joked. Her Dad’s family because she wasn’t going to touch on the other side of the family in case it was that Derek...though she was dying to know right now.

The revelation clearly unsettles her, visible in her expressions and the way she stiffens, her head tilting minutely and her brow creasing. For two years, she’s shared a city with her estranged daughter, and she didn’t know. How? Instinctively, Joanna can tell impossible things about her children without them uttering a word, she’s no witch but she has magic of her own, fully capable of knowing when her children were near and when they were in trouble… did that not apply to Laurel? Was it because they had never bonded like she had her eldest and her youngest? Because there was no connection between them bar blood, and the necklace she spies hanging around her neck? Just a glimpse of the chain is a relief, a gentle exhale expelling from her lips as she briefly glances at it. She hadn’t been certain if Lawrence would pass it on. It was the only thing she asked of him at the time, the only contact she had made. And Joanna stressed the importance of Laurel wearing it.

“I had no idea…” and why would she? She wasn’t involved in Laurel’s life, and Joanna was well aware of it. It’s clear in the comment she makes that she knows it too, that she doesn’t know what else to say. She’s still processing her reality, her daughter in front of her just out of reach, for the first time in twenty-six years. But Joanna is the wife of a politician, a politician herself. Her natural instinct is to compartmentalise her emotions until she can express them in private. She won’t show much else now, out here, for anyone to see. 

Hesitating, Joanna quickly ran through her commitments for the day, before she nods quietly. “Do you mind?” She asks, holding up her cell, but she doesn’t wait for a response. Turning sideways, but keeping Laurel in the corner of her eye, she quickly calls her assistant and, after a minute or so of avoiding questions, cancels her plans for the day. Moving to face Laurel, she offers a small, weak smile even as she holds her breath and prepares herself for the inevitable. “– did you have anywhere in particular or… shall we walk?” There’s no avoiding this, and in all honesty, Joanna’s tired. This secret… Laurel… it’s been weighing on her shoulders for years, chipping away at her and so far, she’s managed to keep it together, despite what her family may think. If there’s one thing Joanna’s good at, it’s putting up a front. She would rather suffer in silence than upset those she loves and cares about. But giving up Laurel was, and remains to be, Joanna’s biggest regret in life. It hurts, knowing that her daughter could very well loathe her. But this won’t go away… and Jo doesn’t necessarily want it to. 

Laurel bit the inside of her cheek, she needed to do something to bite back her words. She didn’t want to do this in public because it would feed into the narrative that she was here for some public or financial gain which wasn’t what she was after. So she held in what she wanted to say to her mother; Laurel wanted to call her out on not knowing that her other daughter was in the city. Was it a lie or did she truly have no idea? Laurel couldn’t tell, Joanna gave nothing away but it seemed insane that she would have no idea when her husband clearly did. He knew a lot and knew about her letters but her mother didn’t? Laurel had no idea if she read the letters, ignored their existence, or if they were being hidden from her. It was something she needed to know but she also needed to wait till they could go somewhere more private talk. 

 Laurel simply shook her head once to say that she didn’t mind when Joanna motioned to making a call because it meant that this talk was happening. She wasn’t being pawned off or given false promises of being able to talk about what happened but for nothing to ever happen. She had been left in the dark for twenty-six years now and she only just learned what little she knew. 

“I work a few minutes from here. We could talk there,” Laurel offered. Her apartment pretty far away and she didn’t want to share an awkward taxi ride that would be filled with silence and they’d likely be stopped in traffic which would prolong the awkwardness even further. Nor did she want to go to Joanna’s house and risk running into Clayton or one of her other kids. She was getting along with Derek more than their previous interactions but the last time she spoke to Clayton ended poorly. Laurel was injured, in a lot of pain, and so tired so she pushed back when he had tried to force the issue. It wasn’t her proudest moments but there wasn’t anything she could do to fix that nor did she want to at the present time. “They’ll be gone for the next couple hours so we should be able to talk freely.”

“Jesus,” the exclamation was more for lack of words than a religious sentiment but Josie didn’t exactly know what to say. She was never great with emotional displays or what to say in moments like these but she guessed that she could be honest and that would have to be a start. She didn’t think Laurel would mind. “I’m glad you’re alive.” 

“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Laurel smirked. “I’ve still got a few hundred things I need to do before I’d let anything take me down. A hellfire would need to be my undoing anyways so I think we are safe for now.”