unsightly.

she trusts bridge --- bunny. these cases are hard to tackle, near impossible with the lack of cooperation from police. they’ll tolerate no mutants ‘snooping’ in their cases. god, they hardly tolerate women. pitiful. ruthe glances around the space with subdued curiosity, honing her body language to blend in, relaxing her features to their most almost-visible. if anyone glances across her, they’ll think they’ve seen a face where there is none.  

a nod is all she gives at first. idly, her heels click together, a residual habit of her youthful love for the wonderful wizard of oz. ruthe nods. ‘i won’t. i don’t like to anyway, in these places.’ a pause. she chews on her thoughts. ‘i trust you know what you’re doing. what’s next?’

it’s true.  rain and sleet and snow all mixed up into a terrible gust of wind, cold like spearmint on the tongue. ruthe’s red coat and thick scarf are covered in a dusting of sparkling flakes, her hair blown and interspersed with tiny fragments of ice. she shakes it out - her hat almost falls from her head, quickly plucked again from the air, popping in and out of visibility ‘til it’s tugged firmly back on again. she seems at once disgruntled by the chill in her fingers and delighted by the whimsical loveliness of it. ‘oh, i know, but isn’t it beautiful?’

ruthe swoops in, unsure of how welcomed her touch is but still too swept up in the sentimentality of the setting to resist. her arms wind ‘round edith’s waist, grip firm as she pulls her in for a quick hug, her huff of minty, cold breath gusting over her as she smiles. she releases her to trot along ahead. ‘come now. i do think you look rather charming all bundled up, but let’s get inside. don’t want you withering away.’ 

      it feels as though her guts have been scooped out, left on the floor of the courtroom. ruthe stays silent in the back seat of the car -- she shouldn't have taken a taxi. her foster mother said it’d be safer than the subway. the driver kept throwing wary glances in the rear-view mirror at first, baffled, but now seems to have gone silent, eyes trained forwards and knuckles white on the steering wheel. it must feel strange having a faceless monster in your backseat.

      she squints through the dirty windshield, unblinking. rain rises like mist through the gray spindly trees that line the new york pavement passing by, most dead from the bitter winter. she looks at the destitute people who sit squashed up and bundled against the walls of buildings. i might be you tommorow. i could have been you yesterday.

      the car shifts beneath her, slides along, bouncing back and forth between the white dotted lines as traffic squeals and honks outside. she feels cavernous. skin stretched too tight, heart clenched in a fierce grip. when was littler she didn't like car rides. still doesn’t, really. she balks at the thought that soon she may need to use a more public method of transportation. will she die in a subway tunnel? she thought she'd have died five weeks ago, when the facility went up in ice, soldiers and security guards frozen to the ground, scientists impaled on pillars brought forth from a thirteen year old boy's hands who had been pushed just a little too far. but he and the others with more potent capabilities were the only children who died that day. or so she assumes. she didn't see him in the courtroom, among the crowd of crying children's faces. some were stony and cold, expressionless as their monotone voices. they went through a different conditioning than her. she's lucky, in the worst of ways.

      he pulls up along the curve and she feels her heart skip a beat, then another, then it rockets up into her throat as the taxi driver gestures towards the door.    'your stop.'    he grunts, and she rushes out, limbs fumbling to escape the confined space. her foster mother, bernadine finkelstein, steps out calmly behind her. 

— red ? 

ruthe couldn’t help but smile. it flickered, moved through the air like a strange and hazy fuzz pulled over her features, her body language mirroring the expression. she’d learned a long time ago how to make herself understood through her physicality alone. it was, however, very rare and very strange that anyone should compliment her on her appearance, even if only her clothing. her clothing was her second skin, the one she could adapt and tweak, fit to perfection and use to express herself just like other people did with makeup. it warmed her heart to hear praise of it. she cared quite a bit about edith’s opinion.

quickly, with some whimsy to the movement which ruthe was not known for these days, she did a spin. her polka-dot patterned heels clacked satisfyingly on the ground as she twirled, hair loosely strewn about as she allowed herself to relish in edith’s kindness. ‘you really think so?’