I can't get this out of my head. It's just something that ive had rattling around. If this doesn't make much sense I'm sorry lol but.
Do you ever think about if the Spartan ii's ever met one of those siblings without realizing it?
Like. John meeting a young female marine. She's quick witted and wicked smart. There is almost nothing she will back down from. At least not until she gets a "win." She will never leave one of her teammates behind. She's also known among her friends for her dry sense of humor.
One day she runs into John whiles he's out of armor. She never realizes that he's the Master Chief as they stare at one another. Blue eyes look into blue. The roots of her hair are blonde. Contrasted against a dark brown. They share the same smattering of freckles. Dusted along their face and down to their arms. Petering out along the backs of their hands.
And when she smiles there's a gap in her front teeth. (One tooth is chipped from a hard won game of King of the Hill.) She jokes that they match.
Apparently her brother had to. Her parents told her about him. How he had passed a few years before she was born. Her mother told her about her and her brothers shared a constellation of freckles.
Maybe Kelly runs into a pair of twin engineers. One is a girl. The other a boy. The girl has her hair cropped short. It's faded green. The boy has long hair. Held back in a tight braid. It's blue.
They strike up a conversation with Kelly one day. Mostly out of boredom. At one point talking about how they had been on their schools track team. Twin Terrors they had been called. They were the fastest in the entirety of their schools career.
They are the only two out of the group of engineers and scientists that could match her humor.
Kelly never sees them again after that. But she thinks about them often enough. About how they all shared the same accented voice.
About the day they all raced.
She won. Of course. But something about it made her feel like she was missing something. She matched it to the same feeling to her younger years with the rest of the ii's on Reach. On some of the few days they had true fun.
Linda was sent to therapy. Well. Not really sent. It was... Suggested. That she go.
Linda did. This time. For the first time. The last time.
She met an older man. Her elder by about three or four years. With the same red hair, that has streaks of white at the temples, and piercing green eyes.
Those eyes that looked at her like she does down the snipers scope. Those eyes that seemed to know her own.
She could see them widen. Hear the hitch on his breath as they flicker to a photograph and then back to her.
He...
Maybe she had seen him in passing once. Despite him never having been on this ship before.
He has been the one to pull the trigger.
"I don't think I'm the right match for you." His voice rumbled in a familiar way.
When she left. Linda tried to stop thinking about the worn, frames photo on his desk. The one with a boy. About eight or nine. With a shock of bright red hair. He held an archery trophy in one hand. In his other. The hand of a little girl. Close to five. With that same shock of red hair and green eyes that seemed to see you even through the cameras lense.
Fred meets a medic after a nasty injury. The Odst's and Marines in his company joke that he has as getting the best medic around.
He was a young man. Kind and deeply empathetic.
Those same Marines also joked about how the two of them could be siblings in a different life. With how they shared the same sloped nose and sharp jaw. The same, soft manner of speaking.
"Seriously Lieutenant. Just give the Doc the same hair cut. Could fool me that's for sure."
The medic said that he did have a brother. One that he has never met. That he had passed away a few months before he had been born .
But he and his parents visited his grave every year on his brother's birthday. And that this was the first year that he wouldn't be able to.
"He's be turning thirty three today." The medic had just finished Fred's stitches.
"Oh." Fred spoke it before it could be stopped.
"Oh what?" The medic had asked.
"I turned thirty three today." It was one of the few things he remembered. Something he rarely thought about. Because something around it had made his heart hurt.
"Here then. Happy birthday." The medic handed Fred a chocolate granola bar.
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Thinking tonight about Caelus, and the nature of his loss and his grief after the Everything that went down in Penacony during 2.0.
Because Acheron, Black Swan, and Misha kind of knew of Firefly, they at least met her, but they didn't like really know her, and Caelus never even got the chance to introduce her to the rest of the Astral Express Crew. The only person who would have talked to her much was Sparkle, who is. Probably not really someone Caelus is interested in grieving with skznmsks
Anyway, all this to say, I like thinking about how alone poor Caelus is in his grief, because he was the only one who knew Firefly. He's the only one really mourning her. There's no one to talk about her with. There's no stories to trade or memories to reminisce with anyone over. It's not as though he knew her for long, but still. No one else knew her at all.
And I love the thought of all of this coming bubbling up, hot and acidic and bitter, during a conversation with Sampo, who Caelus just so happens to run into in the Golden Hour. Poor Sampo is kinda blindsided, he knew shit was going down in Penacony, but yeesh. And he just. Isn't quite sure what to say about it all, because he's never really encountered this before. His feelings about the Masked Fools are...a mixed bag, but he's been a part of them for a very long time, and when you're with a close organization like that, it's hard to feel alone, in grief or otherwise.
So Sampo sits there on their little bench that the two of them have occupied, and he thinks of his old friend April, how she'd died in his arms cackling and spitting her own blood after a heist gone wrong, and how after he'd dragged himself back to the World's End Tavern they'd all held a Fool's Funeral- which is basically just a big party where everyone gets really really drunk and reminisces and toasts the dead and celebrates their life.
He still thinks about her a lot, and he remembers how the time he'd most keenly felt her absence was on Jarilo-VI, the one place where he couldn't talk about her because he couldn't say anything to give himself away as an alien. The Fools still tell stories about her every time he goes back to the Tavern. His first toast of the night is always in her name. Even now, all these years after she'd died, Sampo is still learning new things about her. He's never had to grieve her alone.
Caelus doesn't have any of that.
He might never have that. As they speak, Caelus has no proof that Firefly was even her real name, or if she dreamt with her true appearance. He might not ever find out who she even was.
And just imagining that kind of loneliness hollows out a strange little pit, right behind his sternum, deep between his ribs.
So Sampo claps Caelus' shoulder and offers him a deal. Come find him outside of the dream. He knows a guy who can get them a lot of beer for really cheap-
("Is that guy you and your five finger discounts?" "Whatever do you mean, dear friend, I don't even know the meaning of the phrase, hehee.")
-and they can hole up in a bar or a hotel room or something, and get completely shitcanned. Tell him all about Firefly, tell him everything, and he'll tell Caelus about April and everyone else he's ever lost. Sampo will carry Caelus' memories of Firefly with him, and at least this way, Caelus will be a little less alone in remembering her. And the next time they cross paths, Sampo will be the one to bring her up, and to tell her stories, and Caelus can get to be the one listening. He won't have to be the only person to talk about her anymore.
Caelus rolls his eyes when Sampo avoids another remark about sticky fingers, but...ok, yeah. That sounds good. Nice, even. Thank you. Caelus bumps his shoulder against Sampo's. Sampo bumps back.
(They find each other again the next day, and true to their word, get themselves completely and utterly shitcanned. Caelus talks more than Sampo has ever heard him; every minute detail, every word choice, Firefly's every odd little mannerism and habit. Because Caelus wants to make sure this will outlive him, that even if the Stellaron dwelling within him finally burns him to a crisp and he really does up and kick the bucket, or even, godforbid, if he forgets, he wants to make sure someone remembers her. She deserved that.)
((And it takes quite a while, after that. Caelus doesn't see Sampo again until after everything has settled down. On his last day in Penacony, he finds the guy slinking out of a seedy back alley and all but runs right into him. Sampo happily leads him to some dive bar in an even seedier back alley that Caelus has never even heard of, and Sampo raises his glass. "To Firefly! Who sounds like she probably would have hated me at first, but I would have liked to have met her anyway."
And Caelus stares at him, almost looking startled, long enough that Sampo worries that he's read him wrong and brought this up too soon. He's halfway into planning how to talk himself out of this situation when Caelus finally throws back his head back and laughs, tells him that yeah, Firefly would have politely called him out on every lie he told, and all their conversations would take twice as long with the way Sampo is so full of shit.
And he can see it, the same way he watches and sees through everyone, that Caelus' eyes have a tightness to them, his knuckles are nearly white around the handle of his mug. But he smiles. He hits his glass against Sampo's far too hard and throws it back and gets foam everywhere like he does every time they drink because the guy's about as elegant as a raging bull, but those things don't lessen the genuineness of his smile.
The grief is there, but so is the elation, and those emotions aren't a sliding scale between one or the other. It is all of both and both at once, and that's what contents Sampo enough to throw his own mug back when Caelus makes a toast of his own, "to April!!".))
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Monster au mini Yuu: I saw Ruggie take some shampoos from the hotel. So I took some things too. Then some bigger things. I like stealing. It makes my heart go fast.
Jack: "You really shouldn't be stealing things from others, Yuu. That's a bad thing to do. What if someone were to steal your toys?"
Ruggie: "Ah, come on, they're still young, and it wasn't like they stole anything from the Mystery Shop. Compared to the other kids back home in the slums, they don't need to steal to survi...uh, Yuu, what do you have there?"
Mini!Yuu: "A knife!"
Jack and Ruggie: "NO!!!"
Pffft, while I can't imagine mini!Yuu being in that hotel scenario, I can imagine the little toddler swiping cookies and things they think are toys to play with. 😂 Food is kind of a given as little kids are always hungry just like teenagers, so the boys just learn to get a little extra of the thing Yuu might target on their trays when they look away for a moment (though it's hard to ignore the giggles underneath the table).
Jamil nearly had heart failure when he noticed a tiny hand reaching up to grab one of the veggies he was cutting, let alone when the fingers came so close to the knife!
If it's shiny things that mini!Yuu tends to swipe though, it's typically associated with the bird-monster behaviors. If a student finds their pen missing, they look to Yuu first if they know the toddler was in the area. The staff wonder if it's because they picked up on some of Crowley's habits for collecting shiny things (aka his keys and mirrors) or if it's something that's natural to humans. If its colorful things or soft things they take though then they start to wonder if it's more of a comfort sort of trait that humans develop at that age or if it's a call for attention.
If it's the latter though the boys and staff will make sure that mini!Yuu gets as much attention as they want while teaching them not to steal! Especially to avoid another incident as the toddler running with a knife or pair of scissors. 😅
When Cater got a new super soft pillow for his room, he couldn't help but watch as Yuu--who liked it so much--tried to take it with them before they were told to put it back by Trey. He wasn't even mad because it was hilarious seeing Yuu trying to stuff the large pillow either under their shirt or inside their little backpack, and he got some cute videos of the incident!
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