The stars at night are big and bright (C)

[Wraith]

"It is," Wraith agreed softly, fidgeting at the praise. "The wind must be blowing the smog away." She shivered as if on cue and hugged herself, goosebumps popping up on her arms.

[Firecracker]

Fire could see the other girl shivering out of the corner of her eyes. "Are you cold?" she asked softly. "I... I'm sorry if I'm keeping you."

[Wraith]

"I don't mind," she assured Fire quickly. "I kinda like a good breeze." She drew her knees up to her chest and smiled. "So...how've things been? Met anyone new?"

[Firecracker]

"Things have been okay, I suppose," she answered casually. She laid back the rest of the way on the rooftop and let her hands slip up underneath the back of her head again. "I've only met a couple of other people. This girl, Gypsy, and another girl who said she's a friend of yours."

[Wraith]

"Really? W-who was it?" Wraith asked, trying to think of a single female friend she had. Besides Kennedy, but there was no way Fire could have met her, right? She stayed in Brooklyn these days.

[Firecracker]

"Tara," Fire replied with a shrug. "Red hair, likes to catch butterflies. Pretty girl, she is. She said she knew both you and your brother."

[Wraith]

"Oh!" That hadn't even occurred to her. Tara belonged to a different world from the newsies. "Yeah, we...we grew up together. She's a good friend. Was. I-I guess she still is." It was, after all, horribly petty to be mad at Tara for refusing to give her rebound sex.

[Firecracker]

"She still considers you to be her friend," Fire responded matter-of-factly. "She had nothing but good things to say about you the day we met."

She sighed and closed her eyes briefly, letting herself relax. "She's a sweet girl."

[Wraith]

Wraith nodded kind of sadly. "She always was." Hell, she and Sebastian and Tara were all sweet kids back in the day. Before the Pearsons' lives went wrong in every way possible.

[Firecracker]

Slowly, Fire turned her head to look at the other girl, a concerned look on her face, "I'm not upsetting you, am I?"

[Wraith]

"No!" Wraith said at once, giving her a reassuring smile. "'Course not. It's nice to just sit up here and talk." She shrugged. "Just...sometimes I feel like everyone I ever knew has changed so much, you know? But I think I'm the one who changed."

[Firecracker]

"How is that?" She asked, her eyebrows arching. "I mean.... if you don't mind me asking." She studied the girl's face for any hint or indication of what she was feeling, but her search came up empty.

After a slight pause, she sighed, "Sometimes, i think I know exactly how you feel."

[Wraith]

Wraith nodded gratefully and then thought about the question. "Well...when I was a kid, I was all...sweet and innocent, you know? And people still think of me that way...I guess because I'm shy...but underneath, I'm, well..." A substance-abusing ex-whore with homicidal tendencies and Sapphic inclinations. "...different."

[Firecracker]

"Different." Fire repeated as she thought that last part over. That word had so many meanings that it was almost impossible to track down exactly what the other girl had meant. After all, weren't most people different in one way or another anyway? Well, she was at least...

Fire sat in silence for a moment or two, still trying to figure out the best way to approach this confession of difference. "Sometimes, being different is the loneliest thing in the word," she simply stated, her voice soft.

[Wraith]

She nodded again, the words striking a chord in her. Of course she immediately wondered how Fire knew so much about it--but it would be hypocritical to ask, since Wraith hadn't exactly been generous with details about herself. So many secrets. Only her brother and Kennedy knew them all, and they had both left her.

"I have a lot of secrets," she admitted out loud, because hey, at least she could be honest about that much. "That can get lonely too. But if you tell them, things just get worse."