Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins

You request a baking lesson, and you get a girl standing on your doorstep at 9AM with a bag over her shoulder. This time, there's no crutches; there's no crutches, and even though Levi had said he'd get the ingredients, she's got more, because she found out a yesterday that she can bake again. She can bake, and that means they're not just making cookies, even though they were still going to make those.

She wonders about making this a thing, the teaching, but then Raleigh realises that she'd rather have it be like this. Friends, and teaching, not anything more formalized. There's sort of an elephant in the room, the sort of elephant that she doesn't know if it can be banished with cookies and well-intentioned half-explanations, but she figures she does want to be honest; she can't go around with half the town knowing her name and the other not. But they'd get to that bridge when they come to it.

So she rings the bell - not needing a cab, she wanted the walk, she needed it because she's been too long on crutches - and waits.

Trigger Warning:This thread contains mentions and descriptions of violence and torture. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to tweet @thestarsplay for clarification. Thanks!

It'd been a world's trial, getting herself out of the hospital. She's had to tell the story to cops, to doctors, nurses, and psych consults. She's gotten stitches, she's gotten IV fluids, she's gotten pain meds and her wrists cleaned out and bandaged, and she's gotten the world's cheapest pair of flipflops, a set of crutches, and a pair of scrub pants that are almost too big for her.

She's got blood drying on her hoodie, and some pill bottles that she's got rattling around in there, but she goes from discharge to the hospital room of, she tells the very kind nurses, the policeman who saved her life.

Not mentioning that he was also her friend. She slips into the room with a sort of jiggling-hop that eight months on crutches will teach you. She leans them against the bed when she sees he's sleeping, and she lowers herself into the chair, because she just.... looks at him. She just sits and watches him and she wipes at her cheek with a hand as she takes a deep breath.

He said he missed her. It was like he knew - she remembers now when he said he could read minds about shoes, and then made it into a joke - and she wonders if he really could read minds. If that's why he said what he had.

Either way, though, it'd mattered. She's so tired that any thoughts she was having - they didn't have the sharp spikes of fear and pain. She was resigned; she was exhausted, and everything hurt, but that, too, dulled out after time even though distantly you were aware of how bad it was.

She'd stay another few minutes before she left, she decided - and it was only then that she realised that her crutches were sliding away from her, and even though she moved to grab them.... they fell with a loud clatter, and Raleigh sucked in a breath, looking back at the bed.