ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ɪɴᴄᴏʀᴘᴏʀᴀᴛᴇᴅ ™

5.

R A V E N

5  Y E A R S  A G O

W E E K  1

╳

I set my plastic tray on the table, settling down on the hard bench. "Finally some alone time."

"What did you say?" A voice asks from beside me. It's the red-haired girl from yesterday. 

"Oh, hey . . . " 

She places her tray on the table and sits down. "Hey. I hope you don't mind if I sit here. I don't really know anyone else here. You're a familiar face."

"We only met yesterday. And I wouldn't really call it a meeting, we exchanged like, four sentences."

"I know, but you helped me get that guy off my back."

I squint at her face, as if it would help me recall what she was talking about. 

"The guy. The one that kept talking about how the field team is too intense for women?" She reminds me, her tone way too upbeat for the words coming out of her mouth. 

I almost gag. "That. Right. Yeah, no problem." Truth is, I wasn't really trying to help her. It was my natural instinct to defend my career choice. But if it makes this girl happy, then sure, I did it to help her.

"He was so annoying. Asking me about killing and such even though I'm not a field trainee." 

I nod, biting into my apple. Some of the juice drips onto the tray. 

"You're a field trainee, though. It's only been one day at academy, but is it hard? Are you completely alone?" She interrogates me. 

I put my apple down. "If you're trying to ask if I'm the only girl, then yes, I am. Do I care? No. Is it hard? Not really because I've already done basic training with my uncle at home before coming here."

"Wow," She comments, and I'm not completely sure if she's being sarcastic. 

We sit there in silence, each of us eating our food peacefully. I thought the girl was going to press me with more questions, but this is actually nice. We're each doing our own thing, but we're still together. 

I should be more realistic. As soon as one thing is going right, some other thing goes horribly wrong.

"Come on, guys! You're joking, right?" A voice approaches. "Fine, fine."

Thud.

I partially look up from my food and see another tray placed in front of us. I look up to match the tray to a face. 

No. 

"One second, they're praising you. The next, they're kicking you out because you said something completely logical and fucking Mr. E didn't like it." He sits down, mumbling to himself as he unwraps his sandwich.

The red-haired girl shifts uneasily. 

The boy glances up. His resent falls to utter shock. 

I stare at him, hoping he would realize he sat at the wrong table. 

"It's you," He says bitterly. 

"I have a name."

"And I don't care. Because of you, my friends told me to stop hanging out with them. They don't want Mr. E to hate on them just because they're associated with me." He points an accusing finger at me.

I hold his finger back down. "It's not my fault. Tell them to stop acting like they weren't thinking the same things you were."

"I know! They were the ones whispering and joking about it before orientation! If one of them did what I did, I wouldn't have abandoned them. I don't care about what Mr. E thinks. I'm not scared of a man in a fancy suit. He can go to Hell for all I care." He stabs lettuce with a fork. "Which I don't. At all."

"Yeah, it was clear the first time you said it." I pick my half-eaten apple up again. 

His body relaxes after he lets off steam. "Name's Arrow, by the way." He puts his hand forward. "Don't get too offended by what I said, it was just a joke."

"Right. And so was the 'I'll be the best agent in five years' challenge?" I ignore his implication of a handshake. "Raven."

"Well, that was your idea. And I'm not backing down to a friendly competition." He glances at the red-haired girl next to me, who's sitting there silently. "Oh, and you. Sorry for calling you out yesterday. It was just a—"

"Joke? Yeah, I heard the conversation. I was right here. The whole time," The girl replies, nodding slowly. "It's always a joke when it backfires, isn't it?"

"Wh—"

I stand up from the table with my empty tray, having had enough of social interactions for one day. "See you tomorrow at training." 

"Oh, yup. You can wait to lose to me in the sparring match," He smirks. 

"Don't hold your breath." I turn around to face him. "Oh, and Arrow?"

"Yeah?" There's a twinkle in his brown eyes under the translucent light of the cafeteria. 

"I still hate you." I smile, heading out to my dorm room to dream about tomorrow's sparring match.

Spoiler alert: I win.

➳ ♥ ➳

Author's Note:

There will be flashback chapters in between present-time chapters throughout the book. Their mostly going to be from the year where the agents in Arrow and Raven's batch are studying/training at the academy to get a job in Death Inc.

Isn't 22-year-old Arrow just the sweetest? ☻

I'm actually curious to know what you guys think happened that caused Raven & Arrow to become such good friends in the future -->

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