Chapter Text
("Some legends are told
Some turn to dust or gold
But you will remember me
Remember me for centuries
And just one mistake is all it will take
We'll go down in history
Remember me for centuries."
"Come on, come on and let me in
Bruises on your thighs like my fingerprints
And this is supposed to match, the darkness that you felt
I never meant for you to fix yourself.")
- Fall Out Boy, "Centuries"
September, 2013
1st year, age 13
"You met Hart, right?" Josh asked as he ducked under the bar and grabbed it with both hands.
"Last night," Riley agreed. "She doesn't like me."
"Someone doesn't like Riley Matthews?" Josh mock-gasped. "Something must be wrong with her."
"I'll get through to her," Riley dismissed, holding her hands under the bar to spot as Josh lifted it into a bench press. "Shouldn't you be doing this with someone else? I can't guarantee I'll be able to catch this weight if it falls on your face."
"You're stronger than you want people to believe," Josh stated, his face twisting as he grunted with the effort to lift the barbell.
"Tell that to Mom," Riley muttered.
"She doesn't hate you as much as you think she does," Josh added, doing another rep.
"Oh yeah? And when was the last time you talked to the director?" Riley pointed out.
"She messaged me that you had missed bed check last night," Josh informed his sister, and Riley rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that. You know she's just looking out for you."
"Then why does it feel like all she does is berate me?" Riley muttered.
Josh set the barbell back on the stand and sat up, stretching his arms out. "She probably wants you to be just as good as her."
"Yeah, like that's going to happen," Riley scoffed. She moved around the bar to lug weight plates off the ends of the barbell.
"Hey," Josh grabbed her arm before she could pull off another weight plate, "you can do this level."
Riley glanced down at the weight that was still on the bar. "No way. I can't do 95, Josh, that's insane."
"If I can do 180, you can do 95," Josh stated, crossing his arms.
"Girls do 75% of body weight for a medium level," she pointed out, "that's about 80 for me, I weigh 110."
"And I did 125% of my body weight," Josh said.
"You're a guy," Riley said.
"You want Mom to be proud of you?" Josh countered.
"I'd rather not die in the process," Riley shot back.
Josh just raised his eyebrows, and Riley finally groaned.
"I hate you."
Riley pulled the strap tighter over her sports bra, glaring at the nurse, who was just doing his job.
"Three weeks," he said, handing her a pill and a cup of water.
"Thanks," she grumbled.
She hopped off the table as the nurse drew the partition back so she could leave, bending over to grab her jacket with her good shoulder. She never should have let Josh talk her into overextending herself.
She hated the infirmary; it was always chilly and had a draft that she couldn't figure out the origin of, and it smelled like medical equipment - like alcohol and metal. But there was another reason she avoided the infirmary like the plague - besides the atmosphere.
"Damn, what happened to you?"
Riley almost kept going. She didn't want to have any interaction here and wasn't a fan of other students knowing she had gone to the nurse; knowing she was weak and had hurt herself because she was an idiot.
But Riley wasn't an asshole, so she stopped and turned to see the guy sitting on the table, the partition to his room drawn back as he waited for an attendant. Upon first glance over, the main thing Riley couldn't get her focus off of was how handsome he was. Like, movie-star handsome. He was fully clothed in regulation uniform - week one standard outfit, the clothes that first-years are required to wear for the first week here. However, he looked older than her, and even if he was a first-year like her, it wasn't week one.
Once she got past that though, another look gave her no indication of why he was in the infirmary. His face was unmarked, no visible lacerations or bruises on his arms, and he appeared relaxed.
"Shoulder injury," she answered his question. She looked him over again, and, unable to help herself from curiosity, asked, "What happened to you?"
"Routine check-up," the guy answered, leaning back on his hands as his legs swung over the end of the table. "Got kicked in the ribs a few weeks ago and they're still recovering."
"Who kicked you in the ribs?" Riley asked incredulously. No one here would be cruel enough to kick a peer when he's down, neither would they be stupid enough to break rules - because they would be kicked out.
"A couple guys who didn't like the fact that I wasn't in a gang," the guy snorted.
Riley blinked, before it clicked in her mind. This kid had been in prison recently. "So why were you in juvie?" She asked, beginning to pull her jacket on over her sports bra and new brace, feeling the chill of the ward over her bare skin.
"Why do you care?" He flashed a grin.
Before Riley could answer, two nurses came barging through the ward hallway with a patient on a gurney, heading right for her.
"Out of the way!" The nurse closest to her yelled, and Riley darted into the boy's room, nearly falling over into his lap as the two nurses rushed by with the gurney.
"Sorry," she said, standing up quickly, her face flushing red.
"It's alright," he grinned again. "I'm Lucas."
"I'm late for class," Riley mumbled , rushing away with her head down, too humiliated to spend another second in that room.
Riley ducked into her dorm to grab a long-sleeved shirt before rushing to her academic math class. She sped through the halls, nearly running across the large entryway of the academy that she had walked through the night before. Now, it was crowded with administrators, teachers, trainers, and students, and Riley had to dart between people to get to the other side.
"Ms. Matthews, late!" Her math teacher, Mr. Peterson called as Riley entered the classroom.
She maneuvered her way through the aisle to the front of the lecture hall to give him her infirmary note, and he frowned.
"I expect this shoulder injury won't affect your work," he ordered, and Riley nodded, keeping her head down as she moved to her seat near the front of the room.
"You're never late," her friend whispered as she sat down next to him and pulled out her laptop. "You didn't have an academic class this morning, what were you doing?"
"Shh," Riley smiled, opening a document to take notes. "I need to catch up, Farkle, now be quiet."
"I'll catch you up later," Farkle dismissed. "Where were you?"
"Infirmary," Riley finally conceded. "Tore something or strained something in my shoulder lifting weights this morning with my brother."
"This is why I'm not in operations," Farkle stated, turning back to face the teacher again, and Riley rolled her eyes.
From first year to fourth year - from age thirteen to sixteen - all of the academy students from all programs attended the same academic classes in the academic building on campus. For fifth and sixth year - seventeen and eighteen year olds - students were separated into classes that put their academics into the frame of their certification path. Everyone knew that it was an attempt to socialize students as if they were normal kids, and help them gain connections and networks and, well, friends. However, most students gravitated to their own cliques in their own schools; their friends were all from the same certification path and they didn't like to mingle.
Riley was not one of those students.
Riley had been told that her academy operated like a university - there were different schools under one academy name, all on the same campus. Each school - Operations, Science & Technology, Administrative, and Communications - had their own main area on the campus, with their own buildings and their own training facilities and their own dorms. Operations had gyms, and obstacle courses, and mock mission sites, whereas Science & Tech had laboratories and testing facilities. Like a college, students had academic courses that an adolescent would require to graduate from a regular high school - math, English, history, science, health, etc. These courses were taken in the academic building, in the center of the campus.
Balancing academic schedule and certification path schedule was difficult - especially for operations students. Generally, academic classes were held after lunch, from about 1pm to 4pm. Their courses switched off on different days. From 8am to 12pm, they had certification path courses, and from 5pm to 6pm, operations students had mandatory physical training - whether it be combat, strength, agility, or, in fifth and sixth years, mock missions. After that, students had dinner and flexibility time, where they were permitted to do whatever they felt like - many choosing to do academic homework or more training. By 9pm, students were required to check into their dorms and then have lights out at 10pm.
Generally, there were serious consequences for missing bed check, although in operations, those who did were usually training and got an extension from their instructor.
There wasn't really 'cutting class' or 'rebelling'. Students in the academy either wanted to be there, or had no other choice - or rather, their other choices were much worse, so they would follow the rules to not get kicked out.
Students who did break rules were subjected to a panel of the Director and four other Assistant Directors who heard their case and decided their fate. The Director, of course, being Riley's mother.
Not to say that there wasn't a social life on campus - there were lounges, cafes as well as the dining hall, and bars that served non-alcoholic versions of common cocktails and provided a dance floor and music. Students had plenty of places to hang out with each other, and had a monthly allowance from the school to pay for clothing, food, drinks, and other necessities, in addition to anything their families sent them.
Riley and Josh, lucky as they were to have two parents who supported them (or, in Riley's case, forced her into) being in this academy, had a rather large allowance from their parents in addition to their school allowance, and they had never felt like they lacked in anything they needed. Riley knew, though, that there were plenty of students who had no families to send them anything, and fully depended on the school's money.
There was no 'tuition' to any of the schools in the academy; each school had their own way of selecting students to be admitted, and the only requirement upon admission was that, after they graduated their certification, they served three years in their program with a similar monthly allowance as pay. After that, they could choose what they wanted to do, and if they chose to stay with their program, they had options to advance positions and were offered a much more lucrative salary. Most of the school's funding came from the government and from private donations.
Riley had no doubt that she would be required to stay in her program for as long as possible, that this was her life career path whether she liked it or not. Her mother had chosen this for her long before she had been born.
"I knew you'd get hurt at some point," Maya Hart accused, stopping in her pull-ups and dropping to the ground as soon as Riley took off her jacket. "What happened? Lift more than 15 pounds?"
"95," Riley corrected, and was a little satisfied when Maya's eyes widened just a little bit in surprise before she quickly straightened her expression once again.
"What are you doing in the gym then?" She asked, sitting down to start crunches.
"I told you," Riley reminded her, coming to sit and hold Maya's feet. "We're partners. We're supposed to train together. I'm supposed to get through to you."
"And I told you," Maya returned, grunting as she came up again, her nose two inches from Riley's, "that I don't want to be your partner."
Maya didn't, however, reject Riley's knees pressing on her feet, which Riley took as a small victory.