Michael saw right through it all. The bright eyes and wide smile. The enthusiastic rambling that she called a lecture. The dark red suit that could hide any particularly stubborn wounds. The cheap makeup hiding a black eye and a few bruises (except for one on her neck, that he decided to ignore).
Ava Silva was in pain. But she was handling it like a champ. At least according to her captive audience.
Archeology, after all, had become by far the most popular elective course on campus. Row after row of students both attentive and lovestruck filled the auditorium. To those who came to learn, there was no better teacher and no better archeologist than Dr. Ava Silva. And to those who filled the front rows, the ladies and gentleman with hearts in their eyes, she presented a scenic enough view to hold even their attention for a full 90 minutes.
True to form, Ava didn’t even notice Michael as he entered. The blinders were on, as they always were with Ava, her lecture being the current thing she let steal her focus in full. Michael took no offense, having spent enough years being sidelined by fixations and missions to understand that that was just how Ava’s mind worked. He settled against the wall next to the door, arms crossed while he waited for the bell to ring.
Had he more time in the day, he’d make a habit of sitting in on her lectures. It was an impossible thing to grow bored of the passion she had for her field. Even when they were kids and Ava was the girl from his mother’s hospital that he had more than just a little crush on, he had always admired her insatiable curiosity and the way that everything she learned spilled out of her at even the slightest provocation.
Of course, it frustrated his mother to no end that after all her attempts to get him to pursue academics, all it took was a pretty girl to finally do it.
The bell rang above him, shrill and sharp in his ears. Ava looked over at the sound, like caught off guard by the noise that had been regularly scheduled to ring at that time for longer than she'd even been alive. Michael smiled at her over the heads of her tittering students shuffling out the door between them.
There was the soft thud of an orange on Ava's desk and a mumbled 'good afternoon' from the last and the only truly studious youngster in the class as he left and shut the door behind him.
"So," Michael said. "How was Paris?"
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