Disclaimer: isn't the fact that I'm writing a thing about Bat and Leila enough to prove that I'm not the actual author? (please don't hate me, lol, I love Cassie with all my heart)

It wasn't as if Leila had ever felt completely normal, had ever truly blended into the crowd though she figured that doing so was just fairly healthy; it was good, she thought, to be at least somewhat unique. It was the same mindset that she'd always had since she was a little kid back in kindergarten where all the old teachers were actually nice and told all the children that each and every one of them was a special snowflake and they should all take advantage of it, and because they were all younger than the age of six, they all believed the words. Always. And then they grew older, and some of them started to learn, started to change, started to - well, starting to not believe, but Leila had never really been one of those people.

She understood, yes, that the world wasn't exactly the way she'd always picture it when she was three feet tall, and yet there was some tiny voice in her mind that was insisting that everything wasn't really as dark as other people had believed. She, herself, could be the light in the tunnel because everyone else seemed to be so pessimistic and if she was being honest she couldn't completely understand why; couldn't completely think about the fact that somewhere along the journey most people started to see the glass half empty, instead.

Then again, she'd never considered the supernatural as a part of all that.

She was 19, and she was reluctant to accept it all at first (who wouldn't be?), and she was currently seated at one of the stools of the bar where she worked at herself - because today was technically her "off-day", though you never really could get an off-day when you were a werewolf, could you? No. You would always be a werewolf, would always be cursed with that sort of a thing unless you went to lengths and some questionable magic to fix it, instead, and you just held out till the battles and the full moon. And then the cycle started all over again, and yet - at the same time, it wasn't all that bad. Still not very great, but it wasn't terrible, not when she couldn't help but feel like she was finally with people who couldn't look at her condescendingly, or couldn't cast her aside for being different, because she was one of them, now. One thing that she'd learned as soon as she stepped into the pack was that, no matter how annoying or how wrong you were, all the pack stuck together.

In most cases, anyway.

Her thick coat was shrugged over her shoulders and she was still trying to pluck the snowflakes out of her hair, which, of course, didn't really work because they only just melted on her bare fingers when she tried to slide them off. She was breathing into her scarf, wrapped only loosely around her neck after it had flapped like the broken wing of a bird in the wind, outside, and the warmth was passed back onto her face as she gave up on her hair to slide the hat off her head (which had clearly not achieved its purpose of keeping her hair protected from the light flurry of snow outside). If she tipped her head upwards, the blur of soft yellow lights illuminating the room spun around her head, though it didn't make her dizzy - simply seemed pleasant, simply seemed pretty, and she couldn't help the smallest of smiles pulling at the corners of her lips. There was cool air hitting her bare ears, now, and she could hear all the voices around her much clearer now; still muffled, due to the crowd, but she could make out all the individual voices if she really strained her ears and really tried.

Leila's dark hair fell over her shoulders and she suspected that a few strands were going to get stuck in the almost scratchy material of her Christmas sweater, the same one she'd had for practically years so it was on the borderline of becoming too small but she wore anyway. Her boots hovered just over the ground, her legs long but apparently not long enough to battle the height of the stool she was sitting on at the moment, and she was perfectly content with just sitting there and ignoring everything around her because it was nice -

"You gonna order something?"

She almost jumped with the sudden low voice, eyes taking a moment to find who had spoken - upon doing that much, she squinted and tried to place the face in her mind, still new to the pack and not exactly having everyone's name down just yet. He was one of the more popular ones, though, one of the more well-known ones around the place though he had nothing on Maia Roberts or Luke Graymark, she thought - and then she realized that she still hadn't answered his question and his rather intimidating eyes were starting to bore uncomfortably into her. She shifted a bit in her seat, not having much space to work with, and then gave a shrug of her shoulders. "I'm underage," she answered, like that would solve everything.

The other man - Bat, she deemed, fairly sure of her answer though she didn't plan on asking him anytime soon in the case that she was wrong - raised a brow in her direction, his expression seeming almost disbelieving like that wasn't a suitable excuse not to drink. "A lot of kids are," he replied after a moment of silence, "but they drink anyway."

She tried to mirror his expression, attempting to cock a brow as well (even if she couldn't imagine a world where she possibly looked even the slightest bit sarcastic), before she noticed the almost amused look in his eyes and decided against it, her large eyes going back to normal. "And you believe that I'm one of those kids who would do that?" she chuckled, looking down at herself - striped reindeer sweater and all, jeans rolled up and tucked into her black boots. She looked back up at him, smiling even if for the sole reason because she found it funny that anyone could ever think that about her, and then he smiled, too. An actual one. Small, but real, and she was almost surprised that she managed to draw a reaction like that out of him, seeing as he was tall and probably scary to all the little kids he passed on the street.

"I suppose that's true, you'd never even touch a can of beer if your life depended on it, would you?"

"Not for two more years, unless I'm serving it to someone else," Leila chirped rather cheerfully, holding up two long fingers and wiggling them back and forth. "I'd like some water, though. Or milk. Milk is good."

And then they were back at the whole "raising eyebrow in disbelief" thing, and she would've thought that he looked a bit supercilious at the moment before she really noticed that everything in his expression was only teasing and that he didn't really seem to actually mind at all. She drummed her fingers on the table, and a moment later he returned with a glass filled almost to the brim with white milk. She offered a childish grin to him, he smiled and ran a hand through his hair, and she brought up the glass to her lips.

She practically spewed everywhere.

He looked like he hadn't been expecting that reaction only for a moment, and then she realized that he absolutely had - simply just not that intense of one, and then he was laughing, which also surprised her like it seemed that he was incapable of laughing when you first met him, and she was wiping her mouth on her sweater and trying to pin him with a few glares if he would just look at her, furious. Her "milk" was all over the counter, now, and she supposed that she should be grateful enough that nobody had noticed and the nearest people were quite a few seats down. Everyone was buzzing with all the other things going on with Clary Fairchild and Jace Herondale and all; she guessed that they couldn't be bothered to notice, or care, about some silly scene taking place a few feet away. Which was good. It meant that she was fading in, once again.

In a way, at least.

Bat finally seemed to calm down and she was still trying to avoid the urge to keep spitting out the taste of wine in her mouth - she'd only tried it once and she'd hated it, wondered why anyone thought it was elegant or liked to drink it just for fun, and this was no different. Even if he had mixed it with a fair amount of milk, too. She held her hand out, and he placed a napkin into it, all the while she was demanding with her eyes for him to explain.

He was out of breath when he did so, the large figure seeming impossibly vulnerable and childish in the moment, and even though she was surprisingly annoyed at this almost-complete stranger she could appreciate that he actually had a sense of humor. It was nice, when everyone else was somber and talking about a war. "What?" he managed out, his voice almost sounding like a croak, "You asked for milk. I gave you milk."

"Mixed with what else?" Leila insisted, starting to wipe down the counter of the spit-milk-wine combination with the napkins though the liquid just soaked through without much effect. Green eyes narrowed in his direction.

"Oh, you know, something classy - Chardonnay, I think it was," Bat responded after another moment, and he was almost doubling over with laughter all over again. She cursed him. "It's partly your fault, you realize -"

"My fault?" Leila was incredulous, cutting him off as soon as the words left his mouth, eyes back to being wide as they usually were - and yes, she was most definitely blowing things out of proportion, but he didn't seem to mind at all and she, on the other hand, was enjoying some actual banter with someone who was willing to have a conversation that lasted for more than thirty seconds. Even if said conversation was because he put some wine into her drink.

Bat spread his hands, trying to look innocent and ultimately failing (then again, he never really had a chance in the first place). "Well, you should've been paying attention when I was fixing up your drink."

She stopped her motion of going back and forth on the counter - she'd managed to clean up most of the mess, anyway - to stare at him. "That's a terrible excuse," she replied, totally serious.

"I shouldn't need an excuse, though," he countered, hands going on his hips, and for a moment when he genuinely looked like a little child claiming that he wasn't the one who knocked over the glitter and made a mess on the floor and Leila almost felt like forgiving him. Almost.

"Shouldn't need an excuse for a crime?"

He wiped off his hands on the nearest towel, clearing off whatever excess she'd left behind with it as well before he trashed the napkin for her with the efficiency of someone who'd clearly done it before. "We're werewolves."

There was no more explanation after that, and yet she felt like it was something true and it hit her with a jolt - that werewolves weren't really viewed as something lovable, as something people wanted to be or wanted to see or wanted to even hear of. She looked away out of instinct, eyes flicking from the glass with only a sip taken out of it to the other people assisting behind the bar to the tables in the corner to the random scratch in the wood of the table, trying to think over it all. And she couldn't exactly even understand why she was sad about it; she'd been a werewolf for not even a month, and yet somehow, it had been established that she could never be normal again. Which was strange. Which seemed - well, it seemed hopeless.

They were werewolves, and to everyone else, that seemed like a crime.

"Hey, there's no need to worry about it," he assured her after a moment, and then her eyes settled on his again. "We've grown used to it, and you will too - being a werewolf isn't a sin, and it's not a crime. It's just a lifestyle, unfortunate as it may be."

Leila gave a minute nod - and then made a split second decision as well, taking the glass and swallowing down the drink. It tasted bitter going down her throat. Before she could process it, though, Bat had taken the glass from her so that the concoction dribbled down her chin, and she got a glimpse of his expression - truly, genuinely surprised - until he smoothed it over again, placing the glass out of her reach like he was scared that if she took it again, she'd turn into a monster. Apparently she already was one, though. "What was that for?"

She shrugged her shoulders, licking her lips to clear off the drink (if it could even be classified as that, anyway). "I suppose there's something about this place that makes me want to grow up; like changing into a werewolf changed my insides as well, does that make sense?"

"No, not really."

"Well, I suppose - Hunter's Moon is just a chance for me to be someone new. Be someone different."

"So you're willing to put up with the wine just so that you can try to change you who are?"

A beat. "The wine still sucks. But yeah."

Bat laughed again, and Leila found herself chuckling along with him. "Please don't come to me when you get tipsy off a single shot," he quipped, and the teen rolled her eyes, crossing her legs.

"No promises."

"I propose a bargain, then," Bat seemed to decide right then and there what he was doing, going on with it with a confidence that Leila couldn't help but wonder how long it would last. "I need your help. And maybe you need mine, if you're trying to do all that 'discover yourself' bull, yeah?"

It wasn't as if Leila had another choice - or another person to talk to, for that matter, and she didn't think that she'd really mind Bat's presence all that much in the near future. "Pray tell, what for?" She prompted, even leaning forward a bit on her stool.

"Well - let's just say, for now, personal matters," he answered after a moment too long of hesitation, eyes flicking elsewhere in the room; she followed his gaze and was almost surprised to see that it had landed on Maia for a very short second. She blinked, once, then nodded.

"Fine. So this is a deal, then?"

"I like to call it a bargain."

He extended a hand for Leila to take, and she shook it, unable to help a laugh as she was leaving the doors when she realized that he didn't yet know her name, even.

All at the same time, she doubted that it mattered to him. She stepped out into the cold streets of New York rapidly approaching winter, her bare hands tucked into her pockets, her hat tucked back onto her head in a sort of rushed manner, her boots making a sound more muffled than usual thanks to the very thin layer of featherlight snow on the ground, already peppered with footprints here and there. She added to them, a mindless pattern of steps all around that was instantly being coated with snow all over again, and then one thing occurred to her:

She'd never paid for her drink.

I don't even think Leila and Bat appear on the list of characters fanfiction offers you when you publish a story, lol. But I wanted to write about a PLATONIC relationship between them, I thought it would be fun to take two underappreciated characters and try and develop a little bit more personalities for them, too. It might have turned out terribleee, I don't know, but if it did then my excuse is that the only reference I had for Leila was my memory and her surprisingly short wiki page, so yeah. I tried. I actually did.

review, follow, favorite, all that good schtuff if you like, quite honestly I just want feedback about this because I get paranoid when I write things and y'all are my proofreaders (ignore the fact that people typically proofread before publishing things, say I'm a rebel)

chapters in the future (if anyone even wants them) may or may not be longer (you're welcome for that helpful piece of information).

love,

Rena