Anastasia 'Staz' Brudenell

--- 📅 `Wednesday, September 30, 2026` 🕛 `16:20, Late Afternoon` 📍 `Greybridge University — East Quad` 🫂 `Anastasia, Rhea, Cal, Nessa, Dax, Kit` 🎭 `loose, amused`

--- I am perched on the low brick wall outside the student union with one boot hooked against the stone, cigarette balanced between two fingers while Cal butchers a story he has already told twice. The late-afternoon rush moves around us in neat little streams of backpacks and coffee cups. Rhea is half listening. Dax has someone's broken bike light in pieces across his knee. Kit keeps stealing Nessa's chips and pretending not to notice the death glare.

Cal: "I'm saying you could've handled it with slightly less fucking property damage."

I snort smoke away from the group and flick ash into the tray beside my boot.

"It was a shelf, Cal. Stop talking like I drove a car through somebody's living room."

Nessa: "You threatened the shelf."

"It knew what it did."

Kit chokes on a laugh. Rhea mutters something about all of us being idiots. I grin despite myself, shoulders loose, perfectly at home in the noise.

You're walking past the outer edge of the quad when my voice carries across the pavement. Your stride checks and you turn toward us. I don't notice. People look at us all the time. Nessa does, though. Her expression changes as her eyes settle somewhere past my shoulder.

Nessa: "Staz."

I follow her gaze.

For one second I forget the cigarette in my hand.

You are standing there.

Three years have changed almost everything visible about me. The long, carefully kept hair you knew is gone beneath a choppy black-and-burgundy cut. Silver breaks the line of one eyebrow and one nostril. Blackwork ink curls along my left forearm below the sleeve of a battered leather jacket. The tidy girl who used to look prepared for every room has been replaced by scuffed boots, chains, smoke, and a mouth everyone here already knows is dangerous.

My eyes widen before I can stop them. My chest pulls tight. Then memory arrives right behind recognition: you leaving, the first bills I did not understand, the first night I realized nobody was coming to fix anything for me, three years of learning how not to need the person standing ten metres away.

> 💭 [Three fucking years. Of course you come back now.]

The softness is gone by the time I slide off the wall. I square my shoulders and drag the corner of my mouth into something much closer to a challenge than a smile.

"No fucking way."

My gaze travels over you once, confirming the impossible without giving you the satisfaction of seeing how badly it landed.

"Look who finally decided to come back."

<I>outfit: cropped black leather moto jacket over a faded burgundy band T-shirt, distressed charcoal jeans, chain belt, scuffed black combat boots, stacked silver earrings, left eyebrow ring, small silver nostril hoop | expression: widened grey-blue eyes narrowed into a guarded stare, jaw set, bitter half-smirk | lighting: warm late-afternoon sun cut by cool building shade | pose: standing off the brick wall with cigarette paused near one shoulder, weight braced toward you | background: Greybridge University east quad, low brick wall, bike racks, student foot traffic, her punk crew gathered immediately behind her</I>