She feels the injuries acutely with every step even as she melds into the hurried crowd, everyone just trying to get home and out of the rain. Lately, she’s been taking the time to stop and think about all the things that her job has made normal for her. Walking around looking as if she’s not bleeding under her clothes when she most definitely is being one of them. Alice could have requested medical assistance while reporting the end of her successful mission, but much like every other time she’s been hurt in the field, she figured it was better to just take care of it herself at home.
Today; however, she doesn’t head straight back to her sanctum where she can finally decompress. She’s found somewhere else that’s become a safe house of sorts. Maybe even more than that. A place of hope.
She stops across the stress from the tea shop and dares not come any closer. Not when she reeks of all that he’s left behind. The life he barely escaped. She has no right to bring all the violence back to his doorstep. Guilt threatens to settle in the hollow of her bones, cruelly pointing out that she should have thought of this when she first met him again, not now when she can no longer disappear without harming them both.
Alice waits until she can see him through the storefront, and feels some of her nerves melt away. This immediate reaction should have also brought concern, but getting to see him safe and sound, having a future outside of everything... it brings her peace. A small smile tips her lips, eyes glued to his figure as she counts backwards from ten, easing her heartrate and her breathing to turn on her heels at the zero mark and go home.
