“Elijah Keaton, I should kill you myself!” A somewhat familiar voice cut her off before she could even formulate what she wanted to say. Keaton pulled a face at Amelia, set his shoulders and turned on his heel to greet an irritated looking Bethany Triton storming across the playground towards them.

“Hi, Beth.”

Panting, the blonde girl caught up to them. Her hair was in disarray, but she still had the temerity to look gorgeous. Blowing noisily at one stubborn lock, she kicked Keaton in the thigh. “Don’t you hi Beth me. You left me there alone with your Dad’s girlfriend! Do you know how hard it is to get away from an overprotective hero who thinks that Passives should be kept under lock and key when their partners run off at superspeed for no reason?” She stepped on his foot. “Really hard!”

Amelia stared, more than a little wide-eyed, at the abuse Bethany was giving the hero trainee. Not because she thought Keaton couldn’t take it, but because she couldn’t understand how Bethany could. She’d hit him more than once herself, and almost injured herself doing it each time.

Neither of them seemed to be bothered by it though – in fact, Keaton was laughing, and it was then that Amelia noticed she’d been forgotten entirely in the face of the damsel showing up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I won’t do it again, I promise. Williams was just giving Amelia a hard time, I wanted to lend a hand.”

All right, maybe she hadn’t been completely forgotten. But there was still something in the way Keaton’s body turned towards his damsel, the way her green eyes searched his face that told her she could probably walk off right now and they’d be okay. And then Bethany broke eye contact with her hero, leaning to the left a little so she could catch sight of Amelia.

A smirk touched the corners of her mouth. “Not quite so far from being a damsel as you might have liked, Amelia?”

The sidekick tensed up. Bethany had hit the nail right on the head, the words she hadn’t been able to find earlier slipping easily from the older girl’s lips. “It’s so good to see you, Bethany,” she said instead.

Keaton appeared to be completely oblivious to the sarcasm laden in her tone. He looked between the two girls, and then sighed loudly. “Am I the only person here who’s not on first name basis? I mean, I know Beth hates her surname, but really.”

Amelia felt her eyebrows shooting up her forehead, and she tilted her head slightly at the other girl in question. “And here I could have sworn you said—”

“Yes, Eli, you’re the only one.” Bethany interrupted her so smoothly that Amelia almost felt like she should apologise for daring to speak before her. “On the other hand, I’m sure if you use your words and ask your new sidekick if she’ll call you Elijah, she’ll agree.”

“I really can speak for myself,” Amelia replied flatly, trying not to let her tone become too acerbic. Keaton was the one she’d have to be working with, not Bethany, and heroes were notoriously touchy when it came to their damsels. He’d been reasonable enough so far, but Amelia wasn’t willing to risk pissing him off for the sake of letting Bethany know that the dislike was mutual.

Bethany, apparently, didn’t have the same problem. “Believe me. I know.”

It seemed to dawn on Keaton that there was something more than just air hanging in the space between Amelia and Bethany. He chuckled, a little awkwardly, and took a step closer to his damsel. Without looking at her, he reached out and curled his arm around her waist. Rolling her eyes, Bethany reached into her pocket and unfolded her tablet.

“So? What do you say? Keaton’s my mum, anyway. I don’t want to be in the field thinking she’s right there looking over my shoulder whenever you try to catch my attention.”

Amelia put her hands on her hips, looking out over at the playground. It was the same one she’d seen him talking to his dad by, weeks ago now. “You’re not going to stop fussing until I say yes, are you?”

“I’m pretty good at fussing,” he agreed readily, earning a snort from Bethany. He bumped her with his hip, a gentle motion that nonetheless had to save her from as she stumbled out of his grip. “Oops.”

It was Amelia’s turn to snort, even though Bethany had barely looked up from whatever she was reading on her tablet. Apparently she trusted Keaton – Elijah – to correct his mistakes. “Fine,” she sighed. “But I’m not calling you Eli. And if you try to call me Amy, or Lia, or anything other than Amelia, I will go and find the most obnoxious hanger-on in the entire Academy and tell them I foresaw your future together.”

That got another laugh out of him. She hid her smile this time, not wanting him to read too much into it. “Gotcha. Now, how about we go somewhere nice to eat and catch up on the last few days? I’m willing to bet that they’ve been interesting for both of us.”

Bethany looked up at him from her tablet, giving the hero a smile that Amelia had only ever seen her direct at him. “How much?”

Elijah appeared to think better of it. “Don’t ever make a bet with her,” he warned Amelia. “The only time she’s ever lost was the other week when you interrupted my race.”

“I can tell the future. I think I’ll be okay.” Never mind that she wasn’t allowed to. It might have been petty, but she wanted to be better than Bethany at something. “Anyway, I should be going. I have to – get back to my unit. I’m sure our supervisors will get in touch with each other when it’s time to start training.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” She’d made to turn around, but Elijah had leaned forward, grabbing a hold of her hand. She jerked to a stop, startled, and glanced back. His finger dwarfed hers, and for a moment she could only think how carefully he had to have done that to avoid crushing her. She’d just seen the ease with which he’d flicked Williams into a playground, after all. “Communication, remember? That means that we actually have to, you know. Communicate.”

“And that has to happen over dinner...?” Amelia was thinking it, but it was actually Bethany who said it. She’d returned to her tablet, and was scrolling restlessly with one finger.

Elijah let go of Amelia’s hand, reaching over to jerk the tablet out of Bethany’s hand while the sidekick tugged her own back to her chest, rubbing it like she’d been shocked.

“Hey!” The leggy blonde lunged after her tablet, but Elijah’s arm around her waist pulled her up short. He folded it up and tucked it into a pocket, grinning.

“Your history books aren’t going to spontaneously delete themselves if you leave them for an evening, I promise.” He turned his smile from his damsel to Amelia, who was looking – she didn’t even know what she was looking like. Confused, probably. “Come on! Who turns down dinner in the city, anyway? It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“The – city?” Amelia told herself she didn’t stutter, but it was a lie. Instinctively, she took a step back. “No, I – I can’t. It’s not allowed.”

“You’ve never done anything you weren’t allowed to before, Amelia?” Bethany asked idly. Deprived of her tablet, the blonde was rearranging her hair, pinning the curls back out of her face.

Amelia narrowed her eyes at the older girl. There was no way she should have known about any of things she had done with her powers. It was probably just an offhand comment meant to get at her, the brunette decided.

“It’s fine!” Elijah insisted. “I’ve been going since I was little, and Beth can leave whenever she wants anyway. No one’ll look twice if you’re with us.” He tilted his head at her curiously. “You’ve really never been?”

“My parents were going to take me, when I started getting migraines,” she said tightly. “I was put under observation, and then shifted to Secondary status. I’ve never had the chance.”

Something that Amelia couldn’t define flickered over Elijah’s face, and for some reason he turned to glance at Bethany. The damsel paused in her work with her hair to catch the look. They stayed like that for a few seconds, before Bethany inclined her head slowly, and Elijah sighed, scratching the back of his neck. Bewildered, Amelia could only stand by and watch.

“Well, now’s your chance,” Elijah said, turning back to her. There was a confused light in his eyes that hadn’t been there mere seconds before, and when Amelia glanced at Bethany herself, the older girl was looking grimly justified about something that had clearly gone right over the sidekick’s head.

She shifted uncomfortably, not enjoying the sensation of being the odd person out in this situation. “I can’t afford to bring any more attention to myself. You’re the one who said that people have been talking about how headstrong I am, you really think that sneaking out is going to help that impression? I’m guessing none of those people you’ve been talking to have been happy about that aspect of my personality.”

Her gaze slid back to Bethany. The damsel had been the one to warn her to keep her head down in the first place, what was she doing encouraging this? But she found no answers there, Bethany’s gaze still focussed on Elijah.

It occurred to Amelia that she’d never been so close to a hero and damsel pair before. Were they always like this?

“Come with me to the city, and I’ll tell you all about it,” Elijah promised. “All I have to do is tell the gatekeepers my name, okay? It’ll be fine, I promise.”

She teetered on the edge of indecisiveness. She’d spent most of her life trying to suppress any curiosity about what Sterling was like, but she couldn’t deny it was there. On the other hand, she’d been breaking so many rules lately that she really didn’t want to start testing her luck.

Still, it was strangely difficult to say no in the fact of the earnest look on Elijah’s face. She managed it anyway, of course. She had a lot of experience with turning heroes down. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. You might be able to get away with it, but I’m not you. And I have to be careful.” She shot a look at Bethany, whose expression remained impassive. She wouldn’t be getting any answers from her right now.

Elijah looked like he was about to continue protesting when his damsel abruptly dug a sharp elbow into his side. “Ouch,” she murmured, rubbing it idly as he looked down at her in surprise. “She said no, Eli. That’s her choice.”

There was a pause, where Amelia found herself thinking once again that more was going on between those two than what was being said out loud. It wasn’t her business, though. If they’d cared what she had to say on the matter, they would have said it out loud.