[Kaolin]

#dc143c
song inspo
It doesn't get worse, it doesn't get better
You just get old, it lasts forever

The sky bled bright red, the cloud outlined with hints of orange, pink, and yellow; the sun creeping steadily over the rolling hills and mountain side. Hello new day, hello new me. He hadn't arrived to Gemini with the others, he had dragged his heels and relished his freedom so greedily that he allowed his mother and siblings to go on without them. He didn't want to be there when his mother found their father, he couldn't be there for any of them to lean against.

But he was here now, late and disappointed just like he was sure the rest of them were at him. "Lucy, get up." He croaked, his voice scratchy from sleep. "Come on." He'd nudge his face into the sleeping form of his sister until she finally stirred, eyes wide and glaring, but he didn't think much of it. Motion his head out of the den, and his large form would briskly walk out. Pacing outside as he waited, the sun's light stretching across the grass and causing the dew to sparkle.

She was uncharacteristically quiet as she pushed against him, stretching and resting against his form, exchanging warmth before she'd pull at his cheek fur and push past him. They walked that morning, till they'd got to the boarders, till she had taken him to that spot she knew he wanted to see it. "This is where it happened?" He asked, his voice soft yet still a firmness to. Kaolin didn't exactly expect her to answer, she'd been through enough and though the scene had cleared up nicely, not a trace or stain, there was a residual smell of old irony blood. 

"Let's go see Pa's grave. Come on, you can bring flowers if you like." If it would make you feel better, he hadn't seen it. Perhaps he was too afraid to stand before his father in silence, too afraid of whatever emotion that would happen and he wouldn't be able to control it. But here they were, a mound covered with new sprouting grass and headed by a stone. Why do we bury our dead? "L-Lu... Lucy. I'm awfully sorry, I should have been there, I coulda done something." In truth he'd probably couldn't have stopped his mother, she probably would have killed him like she had nearly done to Khanda and Sai, but the immense guilt he felt for just leaving his family. "I'm the man of the family now, it's my responsibility to look after you and Terrie and Ma." He felt his words start to waver,and the snot begin to leak from his nose as his eyes watered up.

"I fucked up, Lu, I fucking fucked up."

[Kaolin]

LUCINA:

The crimson sky cast a long and sanguine shadow across Gemini, like a blood haze in blue waters, like a king's velvet cape dragging behind the sun's gilded crown. Lucina would have slept until the sun rose again if it wasn't for the squawking at the entrance to her den; this intruder in her sanctuary and temple. This hole in the ground wasn't just where she had chosen to sleep, or even where she spent most of her time. It had become her fortress against Gemini and its people; the symbolic womb of maternal comfort and infantilism to which she returned.

And she didn't like trespassers. She recognized the voice of this particular rooster that was crowing for her attention, and something uncontrollable welled inside of her. Escalation without end. Lucina thrust her head out of the den's opening, big bronze eyes blinking with dumbstruck incomprehension as she came face to face with her brother. Not Terracotta, not Khanda - Kaolin, who she hadn't seen for weeks, who she believed to have vanished along with their mother, and he had the fucking audacity to appear like nothing happened--

"Kao?!" Lucina bellowed, her cheeks flooding with color.

She lunged immediately for his ruff, tiny teeth nipping firmly at the tight ringlets of fur and yanking some from the root. She contemptuously spat the mouthful of curls at the ground and gave him a hard shove with her paw. And then she spat a couple more times to get some of the stubborn hairs off her tongue, and honestly, she didn't care if any of it happened to soak his stupid pelt. The unconventional nature of this welcome-home aside, it was still a lukewarm version of the throttling that he deserved for abandoning her. Love for her brother, for once, outweighed her heartache.

What Kaolin said next struck her silent. "Let's go see Pa's grave." She hadn't been there since... well, as Kaolin put it, It Happened. Lucina paused, lip trembling, and muttered, "Okay."

As for the flowers, she snatched a handsome bouquet of crooked leaves and tiny white flowers from off the meadow's border, and the reason for her silence was that, as she was stricken by inadequacy towards her pitiful and spontaneous offering, she spent the journey's pace by obsessively grooming the dirt-clumped roots still stuck to their stems. Kaolin and Lucy stood on the grave that Sappara had dug for their father, an odd and uncomfortable silence between them. The flowers Khanda picked were still there but they had turned brown and dry, but Lucy couldn't find it in her to remove them. She dropped her fistful of weeds on the mound under the stone and sat, the heavy coils of her hair draping over her downturned face. Another halfhearted mess of haphazardly collected weeds to litter their father's resting place. At this rate, the gravestone resembled a refrigerator covered in a child's bullshit crayon drawings; a bizarre, chaotic, familial mixture of banal comforts. She tried to conjure some sort of feeling that Thresher was somehow present, watching over them, but mostly she just felt tired and like she wanted to cry. Between the two temperamental youngsters, Kaolin snapped first.

"L-Lucy, I'm awfully sorry. I should have been there, I coulda done something." Lucy didn't say anything. She just looked at her brother. He kept rambling about family responsibilities and protection and taking care of their mother. "Shaddup," she snapped at him, trying to get him to stop before he started crying - which would then make her start crying! - but he continued anyway. And, right on cue, as his eyes started to swell with tears and his voice wavered and cracked, Lucina was overtaken by the same feeling. Fat tears didn't trickle down her cheeks, they cascaded.

"You didn't fuck up," Lucy whimpered back at her stupid-ass dipshit brother. "You stupid fucking dipshit I hate you you're not who fucked up. I'm the fuck up. I'm the stupid fucking fuck up."

Kaolin hadn't been there to protect them, that was true. Where did that leave Lucy, who was present and too pitiful and small and broken to keep their mother from tearing them apart? What was her excuse?

[Kaolin]

#dc143c

Her words were harsh, she had always been a bristly sort, but he knew this time... what she was about to say and the stream of consciousness that followed... she meant it. He had left them destitute in the hands of a mother who was splitting at the seams. He'd never forgive himself for it, and he didn't expect Lu to either.

But they weren't directed at her, as the two started sobbing within each other's company, life moved on like all was the same and nothing was fucked up. That's the part no one explains to you about grief. Everyone goes on with their lives, life goes on with life, it's just the people who are the victims and the victim's families who feel the deepest of stings. Are cut the deepest and so on. Grief can fuck off, it planted it's tangling, sharp ass roots so deeply inside of him, Kaolin was sure they'd never fully leave. How can you get over loss? How...

Lucina wailed and sobbed, her face a mess as tears poured from her eyes in a watery cascade, Kaolin sniffled and let her cry. The best thing to do was allow for that to happen, it was the one other thing he could do for her now as her brother, as her family. Healing was like recovery, it was never linear. "Hey... Lu c'mon, don't say that. Y-you didn't-" His words caught in his throat and drowned out by her own voice. "HEY! DON'T FUCKING SAY THAT." He snarled through the tears and snot, pushing his face into her own if she didn't back away.

They were both the children of a broken woman and a dead beast, they were damaged goods... but that didn't mean they were fuckups right? At least not forever. "She woulda killed you, you fucking asshole. She woulda... she would've killed you. Ma ripped Khanda apart, that coulda easily been you." He looked at her more sternly this time, ears pinned back against his head. "Are you telling me, that you want that? Like that's what you wanted?" Nevermind what he had just said previously, he knew there was nothing to be done by the either of them. "You're just a kid, Lu." They were both still just kids, trying to make a normal life for themselves in a world that had never been normal or kind to them.

[Lucina.]

How she hated herself for the tears that burst from her eyes.

Hot, flushed cheeks itched as she squinted, closing her eyes as though by doing so she could stop the flow. Stop the weakness from exposing itself, even to her brother. To their father. But he was dead now. Was mother, too? Khanda? Their family was broken, and it had been her fault. Her fault. HER FAULT. She should have stopped it, stopped mother, but she’d frozen. Fucked up.

No.

She shook her head, as though trying to ward off these thoughts in her head, drowning out this crippling grief. But the sounds of her own wretched sobs prevailed, even louder than Kao’s sniffles beside her. Lucy was hot, her blood boiling as each second passed with sobs wrecking her body. His words thrummed into nothing, limp against her ears, until the voice crackled

“HEY! DON’T FUCKING SAY THAT.”

She felt him press against her.
The heat of his anguish against her own.

But she only flinched, her muscles tensing themselves as though preparing for worse. How she wanted to turn and snap at him, with needle fangs showing him he was wrong. But her shoulders hunched, her brows furrowed, and her teeth clenched as she forced heaving breaths. She hated this, hated the crying, hated the flustered emotions that took over her and left her frozen. As frozen as she’d been when it had happened.

NO.
It was at that thought she pulled away.
She’d let herself fall limp then, but not now. Not again.

"She woulda killed you, you fucking asshole. She woulda... she would've killed you. Ma ripped Khanda apart, that coulda easily been you.” She loved him. She truly did, like no one else could. But his voice was like claws scraping against a boulder. Terrible groans, trembling and frustrated, echoed from the depths of her throat as she tried to breathe, tried to stifle the sobs. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying. Introducing logic to emotion? There was no room...

"Are you telling me, that you want that? Like that's what you wanted?" How could he ask that? Dipping her head down further, ears flattened, Lucy’s groans gurgled into low growls, equally chopped by tearful tremors. Where were her words? She’d never been short on them before. They were stuck, stuck with the heat and the guilt and the anger, stuck in her throat. Choking. Itching.

“You’re just a kid, Lu--”

“SO WHAT?!” Screeching voice cracked, overwhelmed, with wheezing sobs finally subsiding to make room for her fire. She flipped her head over to stare Kao in the face, eyes asking an impossible question while simultaneously flaring with hollow threats. “I never wanted ANY OF THIS!” Who would have ever wanted this to happen to them? Leaving Saboro was supposed to make things better. But here they were, broken children weeping over a father’s grave. A mother dead? Dying? After having tried to kill her children?

“Maybe it fuckin’ shoulda been me!” She didn’t want to die, but she was fierce. She would protect her family, whatever it took. “Maybe it shouldn’t have been Khanda! Maybe Papa shouldn’t have died! MAYBE WE SHOULDN’T FUCKIN’ BE HERE!” But this is where everyone is. This is where she needed to be. But nothing was ever easy, and so logic held no rights here in this furied fist of emotion.

She didn’t know why it’d happened. And that’s what hurt most.
“Fucking…” The tears were back, hot and flooding. Her throat choking back cries, “I’ll fix this shitfest… someone needs to…”

I NEED TO.

[Kaolin]

#dc143c

The good thing about this cast is I can still hold a knife, so if you ever twist my arm again I'll be sure to put up a fight. His muzzle wrinkled in anger at her words, she was in pain and there was nothing he could do to soothe it, but the way she was talking. It just wasn't right, none of this shit was RIGHT. "Well life just ain't fucking easy, Lu. Not ours, but we gotta make the most of it. We gotta be there for when Ma wakes up and we're allowed to see her." He barked back, body tensed as he shoved against her once more and pushed himself away.

"There's other people just as hurt as us. Terrie and Khanda for FUCK'S SAKE. We can't do shit for em, but just be there and tell'em 'Oh it's all gonna be okay, Ma ain't fucked in the head."  Ma, didn't try to kill you. Ears pulled back as he paced back and forth, body shaking and pupils mere pinpricks. "This was supposed to be our fucking do over. We get away from one hell to fall straight into another. I'm fucking sorry Lu. Okay? I'm fucking sorry." The wavering shake of his voice was followed by a hollow sob.

Life was supposed to get better, for all of them. Once they'd made it out of Saboro, he thought well that's it. No more monsters, Ma can finally breathe again. Instead those monsters followed them here, their black claws dug straight in their mother's back and tainted her. Saboro broke her. "We can't put people back together after they get broke. It's just not realistic, all we can do is try. None of this is our faults, it's that shit hole Saboro's." You didn't want this? Yeah, well neither did the rest of us, sis.

He'd attempt to nuzzle her and if she pushed or snapped at him, he'd continue to do so anyway. "I dunno how to make this better, just like you don't. But don't you ever fucking say that shoulda been you. It should have been no one. If she accepted his hug, he'd pull her in closer, ears flattening as he held back his own sniffling.