The redhead almost spat out the sip of cool, golden liquid when Ronnie asked how matrimony was treating her. Hazel allowed herself a small giggle at the idea. "Peter and I have been separated for 2 years," she said, carefully. She wondered if Ronnie would ask why they'd separated. "The divorce proceedings concluded several months ago, and Rebecca and I live alone. She spends most days with an au pair, though, given my work is very busy. I'm always busy."

Hazel couldn't remember how much Ruarc liked having Ronnie's camera in his face. However, she looked at the fully grown man now, and knew he was far changed and removed from the teenaged boy who'd run off to war. She suddenly felt sorry for him, and wondered if he wished he'd changed his mind before he'd gone. His injury, the elephant in the room, had probably been a result of his ambitions, and she hadn't missed his hot flushes when confronted with a room full of people he was supposed to be organising. Something had gone on on the field, she surmised, and wasn't surprised. She waited, holding her breathe, for his rejection of the camera or some sort of outburst.

But Ronnie didn't take the picture, just waved it around, and Hazel hoped the action would pass without incident. The blonde moved onto Jack, inquiring after her records, but as they hadn't seen anything from the band for a few years, Hazel suspected they'd fallen under the radar. The prospect of a group photo warmed her heart again, though, and Hazel grinned at Ronnie. "Of course we wouldn't mind! Get someone else to take it, so you're in it too!" A memory was dragged to the forefront of her mind, of the 5 of them in a very similar conversation to this, and a similar picture for them all to stare at. It was on one of the many shelves around her home, she was sure of it.

He grinned, he's been told he was extremely photogenic, but he hated getting pictures taken of him. Usually the photographer had to ask and ask again. "Yeah, you need to be in it as we'll. I got it." He said, turning around in his chair. He scanned the crowd, looking for a security guard who's name he knew. "Ah, there we go. BILL! Get over here!" He shouted, and a rather burly man in a suit walked over "what do you need, sir?" The man asked, crossing his arms as he approached. "Mind taking a picture of us, please?"Ruarc asked, motioning to his friends and pointing to the camera "I'd greatly appreciate it."

"Well thank you Ronnie" Jack smiled at her compliment, "I don't just carry cd's around with me but if you ever got our first one then you have my material. I haven't recorded myself in years, we also haven't been a band for seven years." She admitted, the news was going to come out sooner or later as to why they seemed to fall off the face of he music world. "I'd be up for a photo at some point during the night" She smiled before looking down at her left arm lightly rubbing the bottom half of her tattooed sleeve. Wrapped around her wrist was a chain, attached was a dog tag resting nicely just above her wrist with an embossed clover on it. Leading up the under of her forearm was an intricate looking writing quill, and old fashioned film camera, all surrounded by Japanese cherry blossoms. With any close inspection of the section between her wrist and elbow it was clear who was well represented.

He looked to Jack as she began fiddling with her arm, noticing the tattoo. She actually went through with getting it.

They had a past, but, he decided to put them aside so she could peruse her aspirations. He didn't want her to be sitting there, waiting on him. He wanted her to follow her drama with no interference from him being away. She was doing alright now, certainly better than him. Seeing the tattoo on her wrist brought the crooked smirk back to his face for a moment. That picture should have been taken at that moment to capture the past look the group had before. This one, though, would definitely make for a before and after picture.

Kai smiled as Jack and Ruarc came and sat with them.

"I'm still such a huge fan of your music Jack." Kai confessed, grinning sheepishly. "It's a shame you guys stopped, you were really good.'

He noticed the tattoo on her forearm and it brought back a lot of good memories. They all had plans to get it but Kai was too much of a chicken. Needles have never been his strong suit, he used to cry like a baby when he had to get his blood tested because his over protective mom thought that whenever Kai was sick, even if it was just a cold, he was dying from serious illness. He has no problem administering needles to someone however, otherwise it would be a huge problem for his job. The tattoo came out really well though, and he was glad that at least one of them went through of it.

"You know, a picture sounds awesome. Ronnie the picture wizard could put a highschool picture next to this one and we could all gawk at how weird we looked." He suggested, half teasing on the last part.

It was very peculiar, Hazel thought, how each of them could at once feel like they knew the others better than any people in the world, and in the same instance not at all. They were all, she was sure, sat thinking, wondering, what each had done for the last 7-10 years and where it had gotten them. There were very obvious changes to the group that she observed.

Ruarc's was the most obvious, the elephant in the room, the thing that drew her attention most. The man's leg had to be dragged almost like a dead weight, and she could tell that large amounts of people panicked him, though she couldn't guess why, in her naivety. But his face still held that youthfulness and enigmatic charm that she, and every other female in the near vicinity, had thought ridiculously attractive. To think of it now, finding him attractive beyond the way anyone could remark on the appearance of something they didn't particularly love, like a painting that was vaguely interesting in colour, was extremely strange to Hazel. She wondered if, perhaps, she'd just been trying to conform, subconsciously, as every other girl around her swooned at his crooked grin. This, she realised with a sinking heart, had mostly disappeared where before it had been plastered on his face. Something terrible had certainly happened to this man.

Ronnie, too, still held the youthful - and gorgeous, as Hazel has always thought, but could now appreciate with new understanding - appearance she'd had, but in a different way. She was full of joy and it made Hazel grin as well when she looked at her old friend. It was probably the reason she'd kept in contact with the other girl for the longest out of all their friends. She'd also changed the least, the redhead thought, probably because she'd seen her most recently.

Hazel could see that Kai had dyed his hair, probably a few times, before settling on a dirty blonde colour that, despite his tanned skin, seemed to go quite well. Still tall, still athletic-seeming, still young. Hazel knew one day she'd be jealous of these friends who seemed to all hold their youth a lot more easily than she did, as the only one of them to have a more matured appearance - though none could say she'd acquired wrinkles yet! The most obvious difference in Kai was that he seemed to be more talkative; this was probably a very good thing, for him, as he had been very quiet and could have used some assertiveness that he had obviously gained.

As they sat and talked, Hazel watched them all, and finally her eyes settled on Jack. The blonde was playing with something on her arm, or at least it appeared that way, and Hazel was just about able to see the tattoo that the rocker stroked. Vague, the redhead remembered talk of them all getting one done, and recalled how she'd avoided participating in that conversation. She didn't like the idea of permanently marking her body, but hadn't wanted to dampen the spirits of her friends. They'd been maybe 15 when they'd talked about that, and Jack appeared to be the only one who'd gotten the tattoo. A stab of guilt struck Hazel, but she couldn't really do anything about it, and didn't particularly want to; she hadn't wanted a tattoo, but that didn't stop the others getting one.

Just as she was thinking about how she'd changed since she'd known them all, Kai spoke up, as though reading her thoughts. "I've changed an awful lot, I'm afraid," she said, laughing. It was true; now lacking the immature face and thick hair that couldn't be tamed, she could only be described as 'matured'. Ugly duckling to swan, Peter had said, and though she wasn't sure he was right. Her mother had always called her beautiful, but mothers were supposed to. Her hair had darkened and become more tameable, her face was less round, and the freckles on her face had been minimized though not disappeared completely. In personality, she'd grown a lot; Hazel had begun to realise who she really was, what she wanted, why she wanted it. Of course, she was nowhere near all the answers, but she was far closer. And now she knew how to tell people and how to get things done.

Ruarc chuckled at Kai's remark."Weird looking? I envy my younger, more energetic self.And I miss my long hair. Can't bring myself to grow it back out to as long as I had it in highschool. Silly army values and whatnot." He said, leaning back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes for a second, noting that the bags from losing sleep were getting a bit worse. He was sure that his eyes had dark circles around them now. "Yeah, I've changed as well. Physically and mentally. PTSD can sure do a hell of a lot to a guy." He said, chuckling a bit as he tried to make light of things, as usual. He was actually quite surprised no one had asked why he limped now.

"Well thanks Kai" Jack smiled looking up at him, which in order to do so she had to look past Ruarc. Catching his twisted little grin made her flush a little, she quickly looked down with a little bigger smile and a slight laugh looking like she was playing with her nails. "It wasn't so much that we were bad that drove us apart, it was the guys attitudes. Fame had changed us all in weird ways, some worse than others. Mason turned out to be a pompous jerk, Danny and I actually we kinda fine, we even tried a different kind of relationship that lasted a year and a half but his little white habit got the best of him, no matter how hard I tried to help him, I just couldn't handle it any more." She sighed softly.

"Any way" She shook it off looking back up at the group. "I don't think we all look that weird, except for maybe me, but I'm use to that, the rockstar rockabilly look." She smiled "I still think everyone looks great, these years have not phased you much" Jack smiled looking at everyone, even though she wasn't fully truthful, you could tell there were hardships each of them went through at one point or another, one in particular. To which he reviled what his was. 'That explains the running out' She thought to herself. "You seem to be handling it well now though" Jack said softly focusing on Ruarc. Knowing a little about what he spoke about she wanted to know more, but couldn't bring herself to ask, even with their past she couldn't just bring something like that up in casual conversation after how many years of not talking to one another? "The short hair is different but it looks nice" She finished her thought out loud with a smile.

"You better be careful with that sir, it's my baby along with having the contents of my next paycheck," the playful warning directed to the other security guard as Ronnie handed over her camera over to Bill, though slightly reluctantly. With everyone's eyes upon the camera with warm smiles clearly directed toward the bright flash the camera was once again in this proper location, place rightfully in Ronnie's hands. Taking moment to scan over the picture with a satisfied nod, the blonde passed the image around the full circle of the table, before flicking through the machine's memory after Kai's comment of old pictures, trying to find just that. "We don't look all that different you know?" a content smile wove itself onto her lips as she once again offered the picture to the four of them.

Ronnie took another sip of her drink, shooting a quick sheepish smile towards Hazel at the news of her split with Peter, not wanting to bring up a sore topic, before Jack's movement was caught in her peripheral vision. Eager to take a closer look at the penmanship of the artwork, "Jack those are beautiful, when did you get them done?" she questioned as her fingertips briefly pulled up the sleeve for a better view.

The comfortable atmosphere was broken by Ruarc as the thought of the once happy-go-lucky guy that she once knew in high school was plague with the condition of PTSD, it was something she would always wonder about when her mind wandered towards the old group on why was it that compelled the man to take off to the military, it even now, seem like such an odd choice of career for Ruarc. But it seemed that his plans were not the only ones that weren't followed in the same way he had laid them out, Jack's dreams also were temporarily at a halt. A shame really, her band and sound were unique and Ronnie still would play her CD while rooting through the piles of pictures for that week. Though it was less often that she would indulge in those old haunted notes, it was a bitter-sweetness that she preferred to not subject herself too.

Kai's life was still a bit of a mystery to Ronnie, he always had a interest in everything and anything related to the medical world so it was no surprise that was where he was now after all these years. Though the news of him having a family was new information, within in all the conversations that they had in high school, medicine was always one of the subjects, marriage however, never was part of their conversations. It was undeniable that the of photograph of Lynn was adorable but it appeared that the mother was not in the picture and it was inquiry that was swimming around Ronnie's head.

On the other hand, though stressful and the workload heavy, both Kai and Hazel had reached the careers that they were always taking about 8 years ago. They, like Ronnie herself, were very lucky in this way and from the last she heard from Haze that work was going smoothly though the redhead had too had her bumps with her divorce. It was odd but in a way, Ronnie felt a tad bit guilty, the women had come to her for advice right after her engagement with Peter and Ronnie had encouraged the Haze with a squeal of happiness and asking for an invitation to the wedding itself. It was a wonder to what had caused the once happy pair to separate, but that question was for another time and place. For now relaxing in the old company of her four best friends was looking to be an enjoyable evening.