Persephone wasn't much of an early riser. Sure, she loved the sun. That was why she spent a lot of time at the top of Mount Justice. But she had never liked to rise with the sun. She much preferred using the early morning sun to keep her warm as she slept. And waking before the sun? That was just not an option.

But there were still some days, like today, where it didn't matter how much she wanted to sleep. It didn't matter how much she tossed and turned or how high she pushed the heat up in her room. She couldn't sleep. Her mind was restless, replaying everything that had ever happened to her. All night long she saw Orren's face, his dad's face, her parent's faces. She saw Orren's face as she had last seen it before she left - covered in a grief she had no words of comfort for. I'm sorry? What did that even mean? I'm sorry it was your dad and not mine? I'm sorry it wasn't someone else? I'm sorry I let this happen? She had no control over it. Her apologies were meaningless. Still, she should have said something. The next morning she had woken up in the car, packed boxes next to her, with her parents telling her it was for her own good. They had no idea. They did all the wrong things, but for the right reasons? It was nights like this, sleepless and lonely, she sometimes though she had made a mistake. Maybe her parents had meant well, and just handled it wrong. What would she have done? She wanted to say she would have listened to her child, she would have believed them, but how could she know that?

And then she tried to push the thoughts from her mind. No, she had done the right thing. And anyways, it was too late now. What was done was done. But she was still a child who had had to grow up too fast. Most of the years she should have spent maturing she had spent arguing and hiding and resenting, and then all of a sudden she was too busy being self-sufficient to be anything else. Too busy finding a job to find herself. Too busy surviving to live. 

Sometimes, on those nights, she thought about where she'd be if she hadn't found the team. If she hadn't been late to work that one day and she hadn't gotten stuck driving to the store to get more decorations for the library's party and she hadn't had to take the long way because of traffic, and if by the time she got there, she hadn't driven past Orren. What would have happened if she hadn't seen him as he looked now, eleven years later, and convinced herself that he was Ichor. The superhero had stuck in her mind after she saw a news report about him, but she couldn't figure out why. And then she had seen Orren, and realized that was where she knew Ichor from. It was a small chance, that her childhood best friend was now a superhero, but wasn't it also a small chance that she could produce fire from her body? So she had scoped the place out, and sure enough he was there. An incident later, she was on the team too. 

And then, of course, her mind wandered to the incident. That face, and the hat. They had come out of the darkness all of a sudden. Just thinking about it made her skin crawl and her heart beat faster. And then, unable to deal with her fright, she would have to light up her hand and scope out her room to make sure he wasn't lurking there in the shadows.

That was usually when she got up. She needed to move, stop allowing her mind to wander. Sure, there was a chance he was out there, but not at this hour. He slept late, surely she was safe for a few hours. So Persephone pulled herself out of bed and tugged on a tee-shirt and shorts and took a walk around the place.She took a few laps around the halls, amusing herself with her hand torch, before she heard other people moving around. Eventually her stomach growled, and she headed towards the kitchen.