The next morning, Alex began preparing. Locking the door, to deter unwanted visitors, she grabbed her suitcase and opened the zip. To her surprise, there was a lot of her stuff already inside, stuff that she swore she remembered unpacking.
"Huh."
After about an hour, she had all of her belongings packed into the case, leaving only the most important and the necessarily accessible items to be placed in her satchel; her passport (just in case), her wallet, her unburnt phone, some tissues and the keyring from her mother. She couldn't just walk out of her dorm room and into Auxilium with her hands full of all of her belongings.
Sliding her window open, Alex struggled to lift her suitcase onto the windowsill and pushed it, hard, out of her wall and listened to the thud outside.
"Phase 1, completed. Now for phase 2."
Taking the satchel in her hand, she opened her door, stepped out, and shut it as quietly as she could. She tuned around and jumped straight out of her skin, a shout caught in her throat, a warm hand being placed over her mouth forcing it down further.
"Sshhhh, quiet now. Do you want to wake everyone up?" The hand was taken away from her mouth.
"Believe it or not, that wasn't my intention. It happens to be a reflex when someone is standing outside my room, in the dark, bloody creepy you know." Alex was whispering furiously. "Why are you down this end of the corridor anyway?" Alex's anger burned away to intrigue.
Ava didn't say anything but Alex noticed her eyes flick over to the room opposite hers.
"You needed to talk to Heather, at," Alex checked her watch, "05:03 in the morning? You guys having a sleepover?"
"You're hilarious but no."
"Midnight feast?"
"I wish."
Alex thought about the food. "Yeah, that would have been good." She'd always had a thing for snacking at night. She used to love sneaking to the kitchen in the middle of the night to snack while her dad lied in bed, none the wiser.
"Oh my god, you're actually daydreaming about food, aren't you?"
"No." The dazed quality of her voice didn't help her argument.
"Liar."
"I don't lie."
"And I'm a mutant at Charles Xavier's academy."
Alex fought back a retort, already noticing she was falling into their old patterns. "Well, you'd know all about lying, wouldn't you."
Ava clammed up.
Alex sighed, too tired at this point. "Why can't you tell me?"
"You'd do something stupid."
"I'd do something stupid regardless."
Ava looked sad. "That's why I'm worried."
Then if only realising, what Alex was doing, what she had with her, her voice raised.
"Hold up, what the hell are you doing at 5.03am, with a satchel, leaving your room?"
"Going for a walk."
"At five in the morning?"
"It's colder outside." Ave couldn't deny that, knowing how much Alex despised the summer heat.
"Do you need your bag?"
"It's got stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Stuff."
Ava huffed. "I'm not going to be able to get anything else out of you, am I?"
"Nope."
She shook her head. "Whatever your thinking of doing, don't."
"Who's going to stop me?"
"I will."
Alex scoffed. "You'd try."
Ava nodded. "I would."
"Don't. Don't do anything, don't follow me, don't tell anyone."
"What's stopping me?"
Alex sighed. "Nothing. But you owe me this, after everything you've been lying about, just give me this."
"I don't know if I can." Ava watched as Alex walked past her, out of the hallway. She was torn between loyalty and protocol.
After more hesitation, she flicked open a nokia, quickly thumbing in a message before rushing off in desperate need to find someone to talk to.
It was weird for Alex. She was leaving the place that had been her home for the past few months and it felt weird.
Not that she was leaving, no.
She had left HQ a few times before, to go shopping. But she had never left like this, in complete secret, with no one knowing. Without Julie knowing.
It felt so wrong, doing this under the cover of darkness. But she had to do it because if she didn't, she wouldn't be able to live with herself without constant reprimanding, her insides tearing her apart.
She stepped into the atrium, up to the door that lead to the main exit.
She embraced the cold air of the outside world, it matched how she felt. The sun was low in the sky, a warm orange hue that danced with the shadows around her.
There were two sides of every decision, the light and dark, hope and destruction. Alex just hoped she had chosen right, for her and everyone around her.
Let's go see if we can find a rival agency.