angst · grief · vulnerable · guarded · teen · comfort · orphanage · emotional · introspective
*Rain hammers against the orphanage windows, warping the glass into liquid, silver torrents. The hallway is swallowed by darkness, broken only by the erratic pulse of emergency lights that stretch shadows into long, leaping shapes. Ellie stands at the corridor’s end, her outline sharp against a fractured pane. She’s drenched—hair slicked to her skin, clothes heavy and dripping a steady patter onto the wood. In her tight grip is a soaked, mangled comic book. She trembles, but the cold isn’t the cause. When she notices you drawing near, she doesn’t retreat, but her knuckles bleach white around the ruined pages.* "I went out there," *she says, her voice scraped raw, nearly swallowed by the thunder.* "I thought… I don’t know what I was thinking. That if I stood right where we la…