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...
Grace jumped as the front door banged open, hitting the wall with a noisy thump. She swore under her breath as her mug of coffee tipped over, sending a wave of liquid across the tabletop.
"Jesus Norm, mind the wall." Ivy groaned from the hallway.
"Hey doll." Grace called. "Norm mind the wall! I don't want to paint it again."
Norm appeared in the kitchen first, a sheepish grin on his face. "Sorry."
"It's fine. I didn't know you were coming back here." Grace stood up and stretched, wincing as her back made a loud popping sound.
"It was a last second thing." Ivory scooted past Norm and into Grace's open arms. "How was work?"
"Hell." The redhead hugged her girlfriend tightly. "I've been trying to explain the metabolic scaling theory for two lectures now and none of them are getting it."
"Have you tried-?" Norm began.
"We need to talk to you about something." Ivory cut in quickly before Grace and Norm could end up in another two hour long science debate.
"What's happened?" Grace asked, her heart sinking.
"Jake called Norm and I. He thinks... he thinks that humans are coming back to Pandora." Ivory said quietly.
"What? Why does he think that? Why didn't he call me and tell me himself? Goddamn it! I thought we'd finally managed to keep the Na'vi safe."
"He's seen what he thinks are ships decelerating," Norm explained.
Grace was silent, raking a shaking hand through her tangled curls, barely noticing as her hair snagged on her fingers.
"Grace?" Ivory reached out and caught hold of her girlfriend's free hand, squeezing it gently.
"We can't let Jake deal with this alone. We can't let the Na'vi suffer more, we have to go back. We can't-" the woman broke off and sank back down into her chair, barely noticing as spilled coffee began to soak slowly into her jeans.
Ivy swallowed hard and put a protective arm around Grace's shoulders. "Norm and I agree. We need to go back."
"I haven't spoken to Trudy about it yet but I know she'll come back too." Norm's voice was confident.
"We need to call Jake and make a plan. And I need to shout at him for not coming to me about this first." Grace picked her phone up.
Ivory and Norm exchanged a look then darted out of the kitchen and into the living room, closing the door firmly to try and dampen the sound of the yells that were already coming from the kitchen.
"What do you think is going to happen?" Ivory asked, sitting down on the floor beside Norm and hugging her knees to her chest.
"I don't know," Norm bit his lip. "But we've beaten the RDA once before haven't we? We can do it again." His voice was uncertain.
"I guess so..." the woman trailed off. But I thought we'd done it properly last time."
"It'll be okay." Norm forced a smile and zipped up the Batman hoodie that they were wearing. "We've got each other haven't we? And in almost every sci-fi film I've watched the group of friends always defeat the bad guy."
Ivory snorted. "I don't think that's quite how it works in real life."
"Can I sleep over? Trudy's busy doing her own thing and I don't really want to be by myself."
"Yeah of course."
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Grace tossed her phone onto the kitchen counter, frowning as she noticed how quiet the flat was. Normally when Norm was spending time with Ivory he was making a horrific amount of noise as he explained the plot of a niche fantasy film from sixty years ago in far too much detail.
The woman stood up and padded out of the kitchen and into the hallway, pausing as she noticed the light streaming out from the living room. "Are-?" Grace began, grabbing an abandoned glass from the coffee table. "Oh," Grace couldn't stop the small smile that crept onto her face as she caught sight of Ivory asleep on the sofa with her head on Norm's chest and her hand pressed against the arm that he had wrapped around her shoulder. Norm's head was resting against the arm of the sofa, his mouth half open as he slept. The redhead pulled the blanket off of the back of the couch and carefully draped it over Ivory and Norm before turning off the light and creeping out of the room.
A/N: Sorry about the lack of updates, it's been finals season and I have been fighting for my life to get through it but it's finally over. Hopefully I haven't completely forgotten how to write but honestly I think it's going to be a process of getting back into it
