ROUTINELY

for Te

by Whitney

Her life had become a series of routines and patterns, and each day when she found herself doing exactly the same thing she had done the day before, Cissie had to remind herself that this was not a bad thing. This was not a bad thing at all.

She'd wake three minutes before her alarm was set to go off, turn it off before it could start into its eardrum-grinding wail, and stayed underneath the covers, watching the red numbers click forward the minutes until it was actually time for her to get up. She'd creep out of bed quietly (as Cassie's alarm was not set to go off until twenty minutes later, as apparently having superpowers made it far easier to skip breakfast on a daily basis. Cissie, on the other hand, was simply not going to get through third period physics without at least some cornflakes) and cringe at the years worth of teenage-girl foot grime that no amount of expensive steam-cleaning could get rid of on the carpet under her feet. She found her slippers, found her robe, retrieved her bright purple basket of toiletries, and then... went nowhere.

Cassie slept on her stomach. At least, that was always the way she would wind up in the morning, despite how she'd start each night neatly curled on her side, picture perfect. As early morning light came in through the blinds to paint lines across the covers crinkled and bunched around her body, half dangling on the floor, Cissie wondered if she'd been fighting battles in her sleep, or connecting to some frantic Amazonian unconscious or something. She lingered for fifteen seconds, maybe thirty, letting her eyes rest on where usually smooth strands of blonde hair had knotted together to rest in a tangle between the sharp planes of Cassie's shoulders, and smiled. Cassie's habit of late night doses of nacho-cheese flavored snackfoods (no doubt a habit born out of so many missed breakfasts) was just as likely a culprit in her restless sleep as any subconscious messages from Zeus or Hera or whoever.

No more than twenty seconds. Just part of the morning routine.

In the shower Cissie scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes, worked the tangles out of her own hair, opened her mouth into the spray, then wrinkled her nose at the warm, too-metallic taste. Her fingers brushed over scars that were still hard in her skin, those that were old and soft, and places where the hurt was just a memory. It was too early in the day to think about them, but she let her hands remember.

When she was sufficiently scrubbed and shaved and all of the other most exciting parts of the morning routine, she wrapped her hair in a towel, herself in a robe, and stepped back out into the bathroom proper, to find Cassie standing there, bleary-eyed and seriously working the bedhead. This was not a part of the usual morning grind, but her mother always told her to be ready to adapt to any situation.

"You're up early," Cissie said, toweling a little at water in her ear. Cassie responded to this by sticking her tongue out, showing off a fine layer of morning wonder-fuzz. "Did I wake you up?"

"Mm. Had a weird dream." Cassie lifted her hand to catch a yawn in the back of her wrist. "I was trying to do that American history paper for next week, and griffins kept stealing my notebooks."

Cissie smiled and gave herself two points. "What's so bad about that? Weren't you just planning on using my notes again, anyway? And what use do mythological creatures have for notes on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff?"

Cassie frowned and narrowed her eyes at Cissie, who just kept smiling. "Too early. Cannot banter and/or quip. Begone and let me wash." Her brows drew together and her frown became a bit of a pout. "...also, let me borrow your conditioner. I think I'm out."

Cissie rolled her eyes and moved the still-damp bottle of vanilla-scented conditioner from bright purple basket to bright red basket. "It's always something with you." Her hand followed that momentum up, into Cassie's hair for a brief ruffle. Cassie's hair was soft, even through the tangles of a night, and as it parted in Cissie's fingers, Cassie's eyes closed. Cissie's forearm (still strong and heavy with muscle, despite her change of lifestyle) blocked out most of Cassie's face from view, but she could see half of the smile that curved on Cassie's lips. She swallowed her breath and pulled her hand away. "Call yourself some kind of superhero."

"Only on the weekends," Cassie murmured, and stepped into the shower stall.

Cissie kept that breath somewhere in her throat as she moved through the rest of the routine, breakfast, classes, more classes, uninterrupted and until her history class, when Cassie took her seat at the desk in front of her, and she caught a wave of the scent of vanilla. That breath she held somewhere deeper, until the end of the day when a new routine set into effect. After classes ended on Friday afternoon, she came back to her dorm room to find it darkened and empty, and Cassie's covers still strewn haphazardly across her bed and onto the floor. They stayed that way until Sunday night, as always.

The weekend ran by its usual script, with Saturday finding Cissie devoting a couple hours to her role on the debate team (the coach continued to be very impressed with Cissie's innate ability to take any subject and yell devestating, sharply-honed logical points at someone until they cowered and whimpered for mercy, and frequently asked if Cissie had ever considered a career in politics) and several more hours with her bow out on the practice field. She had tried giving it up cold turkey once, but after a few days, her fingers began to itch, and her chest hurt until she drew her bow again. As addictions went, she supposed she could have done far worse. She waited until afternoon was starting to fade into evening to go shoot, so she could take the hazing light of the setting sun as a challenge; she hardly needed to see the target as long as she kept her muscles' memory fresh.

Night brought time for another tradition, this of the girls staking claim to the television lounge on the third floor to continue the ongoing and neverending task of giving Greta a proper education in classical films. This week's choice was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, continuing their arduous journey through the Keanu ouvre. Traya stayed tucked up at one end of the couch, hogging the M&Ms and correcting the historical inaccuracies, while Greta sat beside her, leaning in with fascination towards the screen and occasionally idly wondering aloud if Bill and Ted were in love. And Cissie curled at the other end of the couch, her legs up beside her to take up the space where a fourth person could have sat.

Sunday night was the call to her mother. Exactly ten minutes, touching over the same subjects as always (her schoolwork, her lack of a love life, and the state of her hair). And then she'd wait. Sometimes she'd creep on to her computer to check the news sites, and see what she'd been missing. And those times, when she caught herself thinking that, she knew it was time to get into bed and focus on her neglected required reading.

Most Sundays, she'd hear the scrape of the door opening somewhere around eleven, but tonight brought Cassie home closer to midnight, tapping at the outside of the window while still in her costume.

Cissie opened the window a crack. "Who is it? It's after curfew, and we aren't allowed visitors...."

Cassie rolled her eyes. "Could you just let me in? It's cold out here." Cissie pushed the window open the rest of the way, and Cassie drifted in to collapse directly on her bed. "It's really weird to get jet lag without the jet," she said directly into her pillow.

"So, fun weekend, you're saying?"

Cassie slid off her bed, taking the covers all the way onto the floor with her, and reached over to pull a t-shirt out of her drawer. "Kinda boring, actually. Only two major earth-shattering crises, and they were done by Saturday." She peeled out of her costume shirt and slipped something far less form-fitting and midriff-exposing over her head. She leaned down to remove her boots, and as her hair fell to the side away from her neck, Cissie bit down hard into her tongue.

"I can tell you..." She stopped talking to rub her tongue into the roof of her mouth, trying to spread out the numbness. "...saw some action, though." Cassie paused, one boot off, and gave her the eyebrow. Cissie tapped a little at her own neck, right at the same spot where a lovely strawberry-shaped reddish-brown mark adorned her skin.

Cassie's eyes grew wide as she slapped a hand over her neck. "You are twelve years old, Cissie, I swear!"

"Still older than your boyfriend."

"Shut up!"

"I'm telling Wonder Woman."

Cassie was laughing now, sharp and clear as a bell, as she crawled across the floor with one shoe on to launch an attack on Cissie with her pillow. "Shut up!"

After the ensuing fracas, Cissie curled up to sleep resting her head on a pillow that wasn't hers. No vanilla scent at all, just the smell of clean sweat. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, pretending to sleep while Cassie kept the light on, working through time differences and the final draft of the unmolested-by-griffins essay. She made her bed before she slept, and curled up perfectly on her side.

Cissie broke routine on Monday morning. She stayed watching Cassie's back rise and fall with each breath for far more than twenty seconds, watching the pulse in her throat beneath that kiss-shaped bruise. She held her breath, leaned forward, and nudged one of the tangled strands of her hair until it hid the mark.

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