Ivory Hill had spent the majority of her adult life running. Throughout her twenties and the first part of her thirties it was from bombs and bullets. Now, at thirty six years old Ivory was running from something that she could never truly escape fr...
Ivory was sat in the lab playing with her cat when Trudy walked in. "Ivy? Quaritch wants to see you in the cafeteria."
"What for?"
Trudy shrugged. "Hell if I know, I was just told to come and get you."
"Alright. See you later Grace."
Grace didn't look up from her work but she raised her hand in an odd sort of half wave. Ivory smiled slightly then turned away and followed Trudy out of the lab.
"So how're you finding stuff here?" Trudy asked, releasing her brown hair from its tight ponytail.
"It's good. It's more fun than I thought it would be anyway."
Trudy nodded. "So are you and Augustine like... a thing now?" She pulled a packet of gum from her pocket.
Ivory snorted. "No, of course not."
"Could've fooled me." The brunette unwrapped a stick of gum and pushed it into her mouth. "Want some?"
"Thanks." Ivory pushed her bandana up slightly and stepped into Hell's Kitchen. "Hey, what did you mean about Grace and I?" Ivory turned back to speak to Trudy properly.
Trudy had vanished.
The dark haired woman hastily darted to the other end of the cafeteria where the ground team, field medics and security had congregated around Colonel Quaritch.
"So nice of you to finally join us." Quaritch said coldly. "Now," he turned to address the group. "I don't want any of you getting soft out here. You've all got jobs that need you to be alert and able to run from a creature or maybe even scale a tree." The grey haired man paused, barely drawing breath before he continued to speak. "That is why you're all going to be completing the obstacle course until I'm satisfied."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ivory stood in the Avatar compound with the rest of the group that Quaritch had called in, gazing at the obstacle course with her mouth half open.
"Isn't that the obstacle course designed for the Avatars Sir?" A woman piped up from the center of the crowd.
"Yes." Quaritch nodded, a smirk on his face.
"But that's giant." The woman protested.
"Exactly, now get going. The last one to finish their run is on the first shuttle back to Earth!" Quaritch strode off, settling down on the sidelines to watch.
Ivory trailed over to the climbing wall with the others, a reluctant expression on her face.
"Quaritch is a dick, isn't he?" A man that Ivory vaguely recognised from the meals at Hell's Kitchen piped up beside her.
"Dick isn't a strong enough word." The woman spat on the palms of her hands and took hold of the bottom of the rope, beginning to struggle upwards.
Overhead the heavens opened and the rain began to pour.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It was after dark when Ivory finally staggered back into Hell's Gate, trying to ignore her muscles screams of protest. She couldn't remember a time where she had felt more exhausted than she did at that moment.
"What happened to you?" Jake asked as the woman collapsed into her usual chair in the lab, her clothes stained with rain, sweat and blood from the scrapes that now covered her arms, legs and face.
"Obstacle course. For twelve hours." Ivory murmured weakly, letting her head drop onto the table momentarily.
"And you did that on purpose?"
Ivory shook her head. "Quaritch made us. Then sat and watched."
"He didn't want you getting soft?"
"Yeah..." Ivory frowned slightly. She reached under the table and fished out her sketch book and coloured pencils.
"I can't believe he actually meant it," Jake pushed on. "It's a bit of a limp dick move for him to watch people do the course without doing it himself."
Ivory opened her sketchbook and flicked to the back pages, picking up the terracotta again. "That's Quaritch."
Ivory hadn't even been in the lab for ten minutes before she had fallen asleep in her chair.
Grace walked into the lab clutching a large mug of coffee. "What happened to her?" She asked Jake, jerking her head in the direction of the sleeping woman.
"Obstacle course for twelve hours apparently."
Grace crossed the room and put her cup down next to the wobbling stack of books that lay on her desk then crept back to where Ivory was asleep, her sketchbook dangling off of her chest. The redhead picked up the sketchbook and flipped it over. She was about to close it when she noticed a flash of red on the creamy page. Ivory had drawn her gazing at one of her many slides of samples with a tiny smile on her face. Grace bit her lip. The drawing was so... affectionate. There was a warm look in her brown pencilled eyes. Grace knew that she should just close the book and put it away but she couldn't help herself, she began to flip through the rest of the book. The only other things drawn in there were some flora that Ivory had asked Grace about and a multitude of drawings and sketches of her cat. She was the only person that the woman had drawn. A strange sensation seeped into her body and she felt her mouth curling upwards into a small but genuine smile.
"What're you looking at Doc?" Jake rested his hands on the wheels of his chair as though he was going to come over and take a look for himself.
"Nothing." Grace snapped the book shut and put it under the desk then shed her lab coat, draping it over Ivory's body. "Be quiet so Hill can sleep." It felt wrong referring to Ivy by her last name now that she had finally dropped the habit but for some reason she didn't want Jake to know that she was beginning to feel... things for Ivy. Grace's stomach lurched. The woman was meant to be a medic for her team, nothing more. This was never part of the plan.
