𝐀𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐀 liked to remain a mystery. It's what kept her safe; sane. The only thing that kept her in the shadows, along with the whisperings of her little birds feeding her their secrets.
The war was her escape, and Small Heath wa...
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❝Blimey, aren't you a sight for sore eyes.❞
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒, is that there is rarely any build up to them. One minute you're standing on solid ground, air flooding your lungs, blood pumping in your veins and then the next...you're lying face-first in your self-made grave with torn off limbs, and skeleton bones ripping your soul far away from your broken body. It's all very sudden, all excruciatingly painful and the only salvation it could possibly offer you is that death may take pity, and provide you with a quick escape.
Otherwise, you are just left with the aftermath. Arguably, a much crueler fate.
So, it was for that very reason, that Aurora could never have known the utter chaos that was going to rain down upon her that very morning when she woke up from an otherwise normal and uninteresting slumber. Completely unaware of the landmines littering the ground she walked on and threatening to cause a fiery display of long avoided trauma just waiting to be explored.
"Where have you been?" Tommy's clipped tone invading Aurora's peaceful morning walk as he abruptly appeared by her side, a dark broodiness etched on his usual blank face. Recent familial exile causing his already bright and shiny mood to take an even sourer turn as of late, and currently being one of the many reasons Aurora has took at avoiding his presence as much as humanly possible since John's wedding.
"Good morning to you too, Tommy." She quipped back in a huff, pulling her fur trimmed coat closer around her body, given the glare that Tommy pierced her with in retribution was icier than the cold dampness settling over the gray cloud of Birmingham's sky, striking her down to her core.
"I'm not in the mood today, Aurora." Her spat back, void of any and all emotional attachment as their footsteps cracked and thundered together on the stones beneath their feet in a soldier's march. "It's a simple question, no reason to run away from it." He added spitefully, with a not so sly dig into their last conversation captured in the shadows of the Lee's campsite, with her teary stained cheeks and his fractured resolves.
"I've been busy." She replied through clenched teeth, cocking her head to the side slightly so she could meet his eyes with sardonic slip of a smile sarcastically stretched across her lips. "My life doesn't completely revolve around you, funnily enough."
She knew that she shouldn't rise to his bait, try and outlast his need to control each and every situation with his sharp edges blended into each of his impassive words he speaks, through bored monotones. But, when he does that thing of his, when he chooses to remember a situation they had both experienced with the selective memory of an infant, and only recollect on her discrepancies compared to his own, it was near impossible to cool her anger. Because from her point of view, she wasn't the only coward heavily skirting around questions that needed to be answered by the other.
