After -- In Between --

Any given day Pepper's a tall woman in high heels and finely tailored clothes, with a walk that learned to be commanding and a heavy handbag banging at her thigh but not once impeding her. It's not an image she projects, it's something beloved, owned. Used when she sees fit. It's her, who she was when no one but her saw her worth, who she is in ratty jeans and a sloppy ponytail, who she will be even if she loses all of the trappings one day. She's all of that now – multitudes confined underneath one skin and made one, forged by the iron will within her – striding down the rubble covered street and through the melee of gawkers towards the cordoned off area Manhattans but today there's ash in the air that settles in her hair, soot on her cheek, and a bitter, dark fear clogging up her throat, too.