Captcha prompt: flabbier light
She hadn't seen him in years, not since she had gotten out of jail. She hadn't been well in a long time, but the Pyramid's health benefits weren't that great, thankful as she was to have work with no questions asked. She was still pretty, still made the other ex-cons grin and catcall when she sashayed by at work. It required a little more padding now. She was getting thinner every month.
She didn't want to go to the doctor. Her mother and grandmother had both died of the same thing and she had never doubted that the same fate was waiting for her. There wasn't any point in fighting it. Nor like poor Jacobi was. He lived in a rathole apartment and worked extra shifts to pay for his treatments. Leslie didn't want to know. She decided she would rather live her life as unchanged as possible and die quietly without interference. No painful treatments. No endless parade of doctors. No shelling out for medications that would only delay the inevitable, but not the pain.
Acceptance or not, she sometimes still went out. It helped to visit old haunts, even just to walk by and breath in the familiar air. And on one occasion she had seen an old enemy. He was still adorable and the old rush of infatuation sang up through her veins, making her break into a giddy grin. He had put on some weight and in the harsh light of day she could see his sweater pull a little tight around the new girth.
Marshmellowy, she thought fondly, soft and sweet, always sweet, the sweetest of the sweet. She wanted for a moment to sneak up on him and dig her hands into his paunch, tickle him until he jiggled. He was ticklish, she remembered well. Around his ribs and behind his knees especially.
But, that would let him see her, and if he did, he would probably stammer for something polite to say about how she hadn't changed, when she had. Or he might not recognize her at all, which would be heartbreaking. She'd rather he remembered her as she had been, sleek and powerful and laughing at Death, not holding his boney hand on the long walk to the grave. She couldn't resist walking by him, letting her hand brush his as she went. He glanced her way, but only saw a blur of bottle-red hair and dark glasses before turning back to his own route.
They were the same now, no matter that they had been on opposite sides in the old days. She wasn't the Twilight Lady anymore, and he wasn't the Nite Owl, at least not on the surface. Whatever was left of both of those people was buried deep under layers of reality and time. There wasn't any going back to the way they had been, nice as it was to imagine it.
