【 reseda, 2018 】

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━━ Даже после смерти ты никогда не будешь свободен.

Even in death, you will never be free.

Those words had been imprinted into her head. Those words had literally chained themselves to her. She resented it to her core, the thin chain fastened around her wrist. It wasn't as painful as the handcuffs she used to sleep with in the Red Room, but it was a painful thing to look at nonetheless.

It was a shame that it was such a beautiful thing: there was nothing Stevie wished to do more than break her chain. She didn't like that she had resorted to hiding it.

Everyone was too distracted with Johnny weaving in between the students and lashing out with pointed insults to notice the way that Stevie twisted her fingers around her wrapped wrist. The fabric of the headband was thin, age had not been kind to it.

The chain was a thin vibranium alloy, surgically attached to the wrist of each of her remaining peers. ( One of two graduation gifts the girls received when they completed the first cycle of the Red Room: the other was far more invasive. ) Each chain donned twelve starry attachments related to their call signs. Each attachment read the heartbeat of the girl that shared its name.

As Stevie's class dwindled down to four, so had the constellations on her wrist. All that remained was Andromeda, Aquila, Orion, and Cassiopeia.

Sometimes, she preferred her scars to this fucking shackle.

The things that had earned her scars had been the source of her nightmares, but the world did not need to know that. To them, scars could come from anything. It was easy for her to come up with lies for the clean, white scars that littered her body, as well as the fresher, more jagged scars. It was easier to look at herself because she had never known her body without them. Her scars unequivocally belonged to her.

This stupid piece of metal would bind her to the Red Room for the rest of her life. When she died, her remains would be ashes, bones, and that goddamn chain.

They told her, didn't they?

Even in death, Stevie will never be free.

( No wonder freedom felt like such a slap in the face. )

Her wrist was raw by the time Johnny was standing up front again. She was well aware of the eyes that pointedly avoided her figure, but she could feel Miguel's stare trying to burn a hole into her wrist. She forced herself to slip her hand from her wrist and lace her fingers together. She casually kept her own eyes averted from him under the guise of paying attention.

A weak lie, considering she would rather be shot than pay Johnny that respect.

She stared at the door frame of the work-in-progress gym, just behind Johnny's body as he addressed them.

"When I look around this room, I don't see Cobra Kai material. I see losers. I see nerds. I see a kid in a funny hat with his tits popping out. But in my short time as a sensei, I've also seen some miracles."

His eyes scanned over Aisha, and lingered on Miguel with a fondness that was rough around the edges. It was messy and it didn't look particularly nice, but it was befitting for Johnny.

"I've even been proven wrong once." The sensei didn't share that same fond feeling for Stevie, but she was still his most glaring misstep, ever since she showed up in Reseda. Johnny could barely recognize the raging bitch from the apartment across him. She was awful, and make no mistake, she's still awful. But she was awful with reason, and who the hell was he to judge that?

"So maybe there's hope for you yet. First, I need to see where everybody's at. So, fall in!"

Nobody moved. They all looked at each other, feeling lost as to what Johnny meant, so he tried again.

"That means line up!"

At least they started moving.

Stevie curled her tongue behind her teeth, her irritation bleeding into her face. The dumbasses took ❝ line up ❞ a little too literally, standing in two single-file lines behind Miguel and Aisha.

Not her.

Never her.

The perks of everyone being terrified of you, ladies and gentlemen. Even the back of you is scary.

Johnny slammed his hands over his eyes, in a childlike way. He looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel trying to get everyone organized, so Stevie turned around to address the students. ( Johnny better not ever claim that Stevie has never done something nice for him. )

With a pointed snap, Stevie called on her first target, "You! Glasses! Over here." She pointed about two feet away from where Aisha stood. She walked further over, calling another student to stand a couple of feet over from ❛ Glasses ❜. She called one more person to stand at the end of the line.

Now that there were six people in the first row ( including her ), Stevie directed the rest of the students to stagger in rows behind them. She walked back to her spot on the end of the first row, beside Miguel, he looked at her slyly. He was the only one.

Every single student, bar Aisha, looked towards Miguel like he needed to approve her order. Apparently, they forgot who was fighting long before Miguel.

"Are you idiots deaf or just stupid? I said stagger, so fucking. Stagger." Her voice was even, but that combined with the staccato syllables at the end made her all the more chilling. Everyone tripped over themselves to get into perfect staggered rows, and Stevie's glare was not helping matters.

It took less than a minute for them to get into the correct formation with Stevie's cold eyes watching them before she smiled sarcastically, "See? Wasn't so hard, was it?"

No one responded as she turned to the front once more.

Not a single hair was out of place. The braided bun she wore was sleek and made her face severe. It was as headache-inducing as it looked, but Stevie didn't know much else. When it comes to training, loose hair is a hindrance. She was used to the elaborate braided styles and buns. Their hair was one of the only ways a sisterhood could be felt between her class: the other was the trauma.

Johnny walked past her slowly and used a cough to cover his words, "Thanks Fleetwood."

Stevie kept her eyes trained on him. She still couldn't bring herself to respect him.

"I did not sign up to be lumped in with the idiot circus," Stevie hissed quietly.

"Really?" Johnny asked, tilting his head in confusion, "I thought you would feel right at home." His mocking made her jaw tighten. Miguel inched closer to Stevie upon seeing the angles on her face become sharper due to the clenching.

"Please don't lose it in front of everyone," he whispered. He was surprisingly pretty quiet. The only person who might have been able to hear his words was the boy standing behind them.

Stevie glared at him from the corner of her eye, and was surprised to see his metal clad teeth on display, "Wait until there aren't any witnesses."

Her glare fell, and for a moment, she stared at him. She even tilted her head a little to get a better look at him. Though it didn't last long, and Stevie turned her head back to face the front. Miguel began to worry that he had overstepped when he heard her response.

"I think you're spending too much time around me, Diaz." Miguel exhaled a little shakier than usual, and she thought that had been the end of it.

She was wrong.

"No such thing as too much time with you, Stevie."

Once again, Miguel managed to surprise her. Her face didn't give anything away, but Stevie had never felt such a visceral warmth take hold of her. He watched her guarded, as if he was preparing to get hit for his words. Once he realized that he would not get hit for such a response, he smiled to himself, which only made the heat sink into her bones.

In the midst of popping her knuckles and twisting the missing rings around her fingers, Stevie huffed out, "Pay attention to your fucking sensei." If she had said it to anyone else, they would think she was one wrong move away from decking them.

Miguel was not anyone else; he spent enough time around her to know the difference between when she was actually seething and her normal tone. He would sit with her at lunch, knowing she was going to kick the chair out from beneath him with some vague sense of amusement. He always ventured to sit the closest to her, when they were in the same classes. He saw the most of her in karate: with his constant losses in sparring matches, and his boring questions that made her feel like a boring teenager rather than an expendable weapon.

Fucking Miguel.

Stevie would rather die than let him know that his words almost made her feel soft.

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━━ The same way Miguel had learned about Stevie over their regular sparring sessions, Stevie had learned about Miguel. His favorite color was yellow. Despite the lack of money and friends he had growing up, he loved summer. While his mother was working doubles and his yaya was with her girlfriend at the time, Miguel ditched the free summer camps to sneak into arcades and act like a mad genius at his friend's family paletería.

She also learned the details of what had happened the night of the Halloween dance. An exchange for the first question he had ever asked.

While Miguel was being beaten to a pulp between four wrestlers, his only friends decided to abandon him. They left him to singlehandedly walk the line of unconsciousness with bruises that took weeks to fade and scars that had yet to truly go away.

After that, Stevie deeply struggled to understand Miguel's attachment to the pair.

Was Johnny an asshole about the lip? Of course he was, but it was Johnny. 

What did he expect?

Personally, if it had been Stevie, she would have been bitter at best. And no one ever liked her at her best. They often found it ... unsettling.

Everyone had left, so it had just been Stevie and Miguel. Johnny had left the key to the dojo with the latter, wanting nothing more than to drown himself in Coors Banquet after the first practice with more than three people.

They were sparring since it had been a light afternoon. Stevie spent more time on defense to allow Miguel more practice with precise strikes. He struggled in landing his hits on her, as he often did, but he was getting better at blocking hers. 

He started bouncing, a sign he was about to send a kick her way. Before he could, she snaked her leg around his knee and twisted them around, so that he was on the ground beneath her. 

Miguel was breathing heavily. If anyone asked, he would claim the sparring to have killed his energy. Reality was another thing. She was sitting on him. Stevie Novak was fully sitting on him. One of her knees was digging into his waist while the other remained wrapped around his leg behind her.

"My turn," Stevie asked, pushing herself up against his chest to lean back and rest her hands on her clothed calves, "Why do you keep insisting on defending those two?" Miguel would have rolled his eyes if he had remembered anything outside of how she felt on top of him.

"They're not bad guys, I don't get why you don't like them." Stevie did have the ability to roll her eyes as she swung her leg around and stood up. Miguel pushed his torso off the floor to look at her, propped up by his hands. 

His eyes followed her face: a little fuller from the first time they had met. In retrospect, she had been skin and bones wrapped in black lace. Her harsh face had been the most intimidating part about her, but now, there was a softness to it that made Miguel unable to take his eyes off. The awareness of her abilities was the thing that made her infinitely more terrifying.

"They left you to the fucking dogs, I don't understand why you do." Stevie was unwrapping the gauze from her hands. Her hand was better, albeit still a little sore from the impressive break she had caused with the lamp post ( and the bruising she had regularly inflicted upon it afterwards ). 

"If I didn't know any better, I would think you were concerned about me," Miguel responded flippantly. A clear attempt to change the subject. Stevie just glared at him unimpressed, not putting much thought into the fingers she was stretching out. Her eyes fluttered shut at the strain, but she began to make a fist.

"Good thing you know better then," Her voice was soothing and gritty, tilting her head up and down and side to side with her eyes closed. She was deeply aware of Miguel's staring, and his silence.

"And you didn't answer ... we had a deal." At some point, when she was on the swivel, she took a chance to stretch her neck. Once she was satisfied with the pull, she opened her eyes to meet his stare. He averted them in a way that wasn't nearly as sudden as it used to be.

A casual shrug began his answer, "I can't blame them for leaving. I know more karate than they do, and obviously, it didn't turn out well." Miguel's words weren't surprising, per se. It was all very in line for him. She was just shocked that she felt able to relate at all.

There were moments where Annika was that for Stevie. But things are different now. There was too much resentment towards her, towards any of them, for Stevie to care anymore.

"You give them too much credit." She pushed back the stray baby hairs to flatten against her head before lacing her fingers together at the back. She watched his jaw clench, and Stevie didn't find herself particularly caring. She was a lot of things, but she wasn't a coward.

"Really? I give them too—" Miguel began to push himself to stand, but Stevie pressed her foot against his chest.

"Kip up," he groaned in annoyance: he was in karate, not the circus. Nonetheless, he rolled back onto his hands and tried to use the momentum to push himself onto his feet. Stevie didn't let her forced practice on him stop her.

"They were taking beatings long before you showed up. You think they ever left each other to fend for themselves?" She asked without giving him a chance to answer as she analyzed Miguel's form to point out an adjustment, "Use your chest more." 

Stevie stayed silent, watching his next two attempts before he managed to get up. For a moment, Miguel allowed himself to feel pride before she spoke again.

"If you want to be their friend, it's no skin off of my back. I just recommend you watch yours." 

All of a sudden, before Miguel had a chance to process her words, the breath was stolen from him as he fell back onto the floor. He looked at Stevie, who was standing from a crouched position. Only then, did he understand that she practically used his chest to jump off before immediately kipping up herself.

"Next time you fall down, kip up. And ... stop telegraphing your kicks. I can see every time you decide to throw a mediocre hook." She looked faintly amused before throwing another kick his way, his face narrowly missing her foot. Miguel didn't have a minute to wonder about her words, and he didn't want to.

Not right now.

Her lonely words could be something to ponder in his bed between the hair metal workouts and his own delusional fantasies about Stevie.

But Stevie was here, sparring with him, and she seemed to be enjoying it. So despite her devastating kicks that have proven to be held back in power, he continued to fail in blocking them and being slow to kip back up with his eyes never leaving her.

━━ 0/10 do not recommend minimesters. ESPECIALLY the four week ones. i had 2 textbooks, 60 20 page articles, 50 videos (not including the 30 min lectures), and for our final project, we had to make a 10 minute youtube video.

━━ don't love this chapter, will probably edit later. but i have been pushing this off for TOO DAMN LONG, so hopefully, you enjoy :)

━━ also i have a tiktok for this account. exclusively slideshows bc i can't be bothered learning how to use capcut or scenepacks or LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT'S NOT A PICTURE. but almost entirely based on this fic. if you are interested in dt's for my satellite edits, please comment here. 

━━ if you are interested in any and all of my edits, even for my drafts, please comment here.