"You broke her jaw in two places." A slender blonde man leaned against the door frame, an accusatory look crossed his face. The dimly lit locker room emitted an interesting aroma of a musty gym sock smell, the walls were caked with dust and grime. He looked desperately out-of-place, like a delicately crafted pastry at a truck stop in his khaki colored slacks, pressed baby blue button up, and a man cardigan.
"It's not like it was anything personal, you sign up for a sparring class you're going to walk out with a black eye every so often." She spoke as she tied up her shoe laces, then erecting herself, grabbed a worn out gym bag and headed towards the door. Her lean frame glided past him, her jet black hair was pulled into a two walked in unison down the hall, making their way out to the parking lot.
"You'd think after being in a horrific car accident the last thing you would want to subject yourself to is more head trauma."
"I didn't have any head trauma, this helps me exert my aggression Adrian..." The retort was practically spat from her mouth. Adrian held his palms up in exaggerated submission.
"For someone who just exerted themself, your sass levels are still ridiculously high."
"Get your ass in the car."
Adrian had been there when she woke up in a hospital bed, her head practically mummified in bandages. Her corneas had chemical burns from the airbags deploying. They had been able to salvage her vision by some miracle, but she awoke to darkness. She hadn't initially known who he was , but was informed they had been quite close just before the accident had happened, and with Adrian being aware of the fact that she did not have any family to wait by her side for her to wake up from the medically induced coma, he came to the hospital several days in a row to insure she had someone there when she finally came to.
She had not been the typical Hollywood coma case, where the patient would wake up in a strange room with an arm missing, and no recollection of the past. She knew enough, 23 years old, lives in Gotham city, and grew up being bounced around from foster home to foster home due to psychological difficulties that were a direct result of witnessing her parents fall to their deaths after a trapeze rope had snapped when she was 8. She also was able to recall that the rope snapping was not any form of accidental occurrence. It had been a calculated move by a mob lackey, who offered Mr. Hailey (the circus owner) protection. When the offer was declined, it was taken out on her parents, "The flying Grayson's".
The issue at hand now was to deal with the emotional trauma of peeling back the scabbed over wounds that time had long been nursing. The years of therapy that was ordered at the hand of the foster families she was taken into was wiped from every corner of her mind, along with many names, faces and minor events that had taken place throughout her life. This was thought to be a sort of defense mechanism that her mind had taken upon itself, darkening several of the details of her past to ease her even if only slightly. The body reacts strongly to trauma, which Reese Grayson had unfortunately been finding out first hand.
"When will you be starting up your forensic classes back up?" Adrian questioned as he focused on his pot full of water, waiting impatiently for it to begin boiling.
"Whenever I can afford it, all I can do now is pay my part of the rent and save whatever else I make cocktail witnessing to start-up my classes all over again..." Her exasperation with the unfortunate reality of having to retake her courses took back seat to her amusement of watching her roommate fiddle with the stove dials.
"This bitch ain't even on." He narrowed his brown eyes at the oven, and spun the dial around about three times before giving up and tossing out the water in the pot. Reese walked around the counter, and leaned in to inspect the oven herself to see if she could be of any help.
"Chinese?" She suggested with a half-smile and an eye brow raise.
"I'm down, I'd love to shove about a pound of kung paoohhh HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MOVE YOUR HAND!"
The burner glowed an angry shade of bright red as Reese's hand was planted firmly in the center. Shock set in as she yelped slightly, rushing over to the sink to run cold water over the burn, only to quickly realize that she felt no sensations of pain.
"I dont- It doesn't...", she slowly flexed her hand wide and clenched her fist several times. She looked up at Adrian, an almost comical expression loomed over his face.
"Nerve...Damage...?", the two words came out in a curious, questioning way. They shared a look of hard contemplation for a moment before shrugging their shoulders at one another. Adrian reached for the "Tasty Asian House" menu in the junk drawer. "They won't deliver if the bat signal has been lit, the order must be placed as a carry out."
"Ah the perks of living in a sketchy neighborhood... I'll start heading over there once you place the order." Regularly a man would have wiser to send, but Adrian was useless, no more intimidating than a 12-year-old girl. She heard him begin ordering after she finished lacing her shoe, she grabbed her coat and shut the door behind her.