I have a bunch of these little scraps and pieces from stories I’ve finished that I’ve put some thought into finishing. I don’t know if I ever will, but I think I’m going to start posting them here to see what people think and, if you think I should finish this off, leave a comment and let me know!

This one is with Jaime, taking place after the end of the series. So, like, spoilers. 

She was ready for this, at least. One thing H&B had done well to prepare her for was the amount of research that went into tracking people down. They had already gone through the list of people H&B had in their files of people who had manifested powers and who they were thinking about dragging in, kicking and screaming if necessary. Now it was cleanup work, and Jaime was looking up ambiguous status reports from people who they might want to have a chat with. 

They had talked about just hijacking television and online video ads. They could play that sound over any speaker, really, so it wouldn’t be difficult to slip it into a few places. Hit anyone who might be international and missed their net. 

“Mom misses you.”

“She didn’t want to leave, you know. She wanted to stay and find you.”

Jaime nodded and kept staring at her screen, absently clicking and continuing to work. She would rather never do this if she could help it. He knew where she was and her mother had made her choice a long time ago. There was nothing left to be said here, and Brayden was free to talk until he was done. 

Just do what he wants. We can’t afford him to not like us.

She had chosen him over her a long time ago. Her mother liked her better when she was younger, when she could dress Jaime up in nice things and she wouldn’t fight back. Now she found them restrictive and didn’t like herself when she looked in the mirror. It felt wrong to have the long hair, the feminine clothes. It was wrong in a way she couldn’t ever describe to her mother. And so she had left. 

Jaime had left while they were on a trip to Canada. In the Vancouver airport, she had slipped away and they had never found her again. Not until now. 

She’d never been quite enough for her mother anyway. Not thin enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough. Her father hadn’t cared, but her new husband had joined in making her feel inadequate. Her step brother had come to her rescue, salvation in a place she hadn’t expected, but she still felt trapped and alone in that house. She needed to get out, and so she finally had. And if she had to do it again, with all of the tragedies, with getting shot and suffering, she would rather do it all again instead of being back in there. 

“I get why you don’t want to do anything he said, but you could have—”

Jaime looked sharply up at him over the screen, silencing him. So he was paying attention to her and not just talking for his own sake. She should have known. He was usually pretty good about that. 

“I’m not making excuses for him.”

“But you want to.”

“No I…” He caught himself, his jaw clenching shut as Jaime stared him down. He inhaled through his nose and slowly let his face relax again. “I don’t want to fight with you, Jaime.”

She didn’t say anything, going back to the reports on the screen in front of her. 

Brayden’s eyes narrowed and he reached across the table, pushing the laptop closed.. “But I will if you don’t keep talking to me.”

Jaime let out a deep sigh and pulled her hands back from the computer, letting it remain shut. “What do you want to hear?” She asked. 

“Nothing,” he insisted, looking haggard in that moment before regaining his composure. “I just want to talk about what happened. You just disappeared years ago. And then we find you again wrapped up in all of this.”

“Yes,” she told him. “That is the order of events.”

“Jaime.”

He meant it to be more scolding than it came off. He might be taller than she was by a fair margin, but she could never take him too seriously. Not after living with him and seeing how neurotic he could be. Even now, his hands were twitching and resisting the need to start fidgeting with everything in sight. She could just throw a bunch of papers right now and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from cleaning them up. 

But she wouldn’t/ This would be fine. 

“I’m not sorry I did it,”  she told him. “Your dad’s awful. And Mom chose him over me.”

“She blames herself.”

Jaime nodded. She knew she was supposed to feel sympathy. She did not.