Daniel in the lion's den.
That was all she could think of as she delicately reclined on the groaning, musty smelling sofa in that rather strange shade of green-blue, the underlying tension humming in the air like the sound of a motor a floor away, or the sound of a distant highway. A playbook inscribed with elegant Shakespeare was gracing her lap, but it felt out of place in this rotting old house (not a home, a shack like this doesn't deserve to be home, she thought) filled with creaking floorboards and the smell of mildew and hardened, desperate boys with eyes like the gleam of starlight on fangs.
Lion fangs. Daniel in the lion's den.
She should have been used to it by now, the rest were, but they were the cause, they embraced it, problem children as they were, and anyway, did she really want to? To...to get used to the constant murmuring undertone of violence in the air, that feeling that makes you hunker down and walk faster in the bad part of town, except it was found in the place where she slept and ate? (Not lived, mind you; people live at home, and this wasn't her home.) The snarling, pack-like pecking order, hammered out by strength, dominance, power, and fights that almost always ended, if not started, with fists and bloodshed, it was too much to take, and school was almost a relief. They were a pack, a gang of quarreling, snarling dogs, and the only form of togetherness they felt was facing the enemies outside themselves. The X-Men.
She would bet a million bucks their home (not a house, a house was empty) never felt like this. Never a lion's den.
She would give a million bucks to see it for herself.
She's no lion, no dog to live like this.
At least, she hopes she isn't.