What if Boom got expelled from Addergoole their first year? What if they had their minds wiped? What if…

Addergoole AU

Something was missing.

Cynara wasn’t sure what it was. Her father, of course – he’d finally screwed up one time too many, and she’d gotten placed in a foster home near a nice private school. But he wasn’t so much missing as he was gone.

Her new foster parents were decent, attentive – way too attentive, far more than Cya’s father ever had been, far too concerned when Cya stayed out or wandered off. They hardly left her room to think, but there was enough time – when she woke in the middle of the night, when she wandered off to take long, looping walks around the neighborhood – when Cynara could feel at the empty place in her memories and in her emotions.

It felt like a missing tooth. Something had been there, and then it was gone. There had been a – a warmth, a place where she could care about someone. There had been a wall she could lean against. There had been a pleasant wildness to make her feel.

She found the paperwork while looking for something else – she wanted to find her transfer to this school, because she kept getting confused on the date, and that had never happened before. The words at the top of the paper said Addergoole, but it was the wings on the crest that gave her the poke in the gut.

She found the anime while she was looking for something to spark a memory – a blond hero with a big weapon, a tiny girl with a large smile. She took it home and watched five episodes before her foster-parents took it away.

They were angry, and under the anger, they were worried. They grounded Cynara, which fazed her very little. She had no friends here. She’d never had friends anywhere; she moved too much. She’d never stayed in the same school more than…

Her dreams were colored in splatters of blood and the shouting of strange words.

More than a couple weeks…

She woke feeling a warmth just to one side of her, a wildness to the other, the loss deep in her gut.

…she’d never had time to make friends…

She dreamed of the shocked look in someone’s eyes and the cramping feeling of poison in her own veins.

She dreamed of Words that could change the world.

Her foster parents had locked the window and the door, but Cya’s father was a thief, and she’d been his apprentice.

She looked for the best way out of town, and a bus driver took pity on her. She looked for a safe route towards the loss in her chest, and she found a wallet someone had forgotten. She looked for the right train, and slipped on when nobody was watching her.

She didn’t know she was heading to Leo; all she knew was that she was heading home.

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