A/N: HI! I apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes, they aren't my strongest. I have attempted to keep the characters as in-character as possible. But anyway... ENJOY!
When she's eight, he's thirteen, and Gods, he's so stupid.
He's looking for the world of him like there's anywhere else he'd rather be in his scuffed grey Converse and his faded ALTEA t-shirt, his bored expression and the sun too hot on his brown hair, but really, she's feeling it, too, and she recognizes it just a little though she does want to be here - she does, it's just this place is new, and she isn't quite used to it yet. Isn't quite used to having a family since the nice couple that came to the Orphanage introduced themselves to her and said how they always wanted a daughter and hugged her and were nicer to her than the other children ever were.
She loves her new family, she really, really does, it's just a little frightening here in this new town with Mom's old friend and her strange husband and their even stranger son.
This is a nice neighborhood, and here she has her very own room with her very own bathroom her new Dad said she'd be happier with when she grew up a bit, grew up because they were here to stay in this nice neighborhood with her family and her small bag of things and the moving truck Mom complains is two days late already. But without any furniture in their new house, they've gotten to eat Chinese food (which she's never had but loves just maybe more than anything) on the kitchen floor and cereal out of plastic cups because that's all they have.
It's really not much, but to Robin - well. She thinks she's going to like this. A lot. Her dad said he'd let her drive in about eight years he quickly had to add 'cause Mom was giving him a look she's starting to recognize as something fond and warm before they'd hold hands over the console of their small silver car, and this is really nice.
It's been six months with them since the day she got to leave the orphanage, and well, she thinks with all the smiling pretentiousness of a young girl, that she's never been closer to God 'cause she's prayed a lot for a family to pick her up and want to keep her. Her dragon toy's prayed a lot with her, too.
But meeting new people that genuinely seem to care for her, and so many of them like bold boy from a street down that introduced himself as Chrom with his friend Frederick and his two sisters were a little too much too fast too nervous for her.
All but this boy Lon'qu who looked really distressed and annoyed when his Mom made him introduce himself.
His name is Lon'qu. He sarcastically hopes she likes it here, and Mister Ronkuu laughs and puts his arm around his shoulders. "We're your neighbors," he says just in case she missed it, and when she realizes she hasn't been paying much attention to anything but the streets and all the houses and the few people she can see living life (one of them with a dog(!) she's too afraid to ask for just yet, please), she flusters just a bit.
"I'm very happy to meet you," she pipes up politely, and the way her parents smile at her makes her real happy.
Miss Ke'ri asks if she enjoys it here yet along with several other questions, and yes, strawberry ice cream (after her first time trying it last night after she thought the frozenness of it would kill her), I love school, that'd be great! Except when she asks what her favorite color is, she accidentally answers with black instead of her preferred palette of purple, and Lon'qu finally looks at her with his brown eyes bright like he's just noticed she's there. That any of them are there. That he's outside.
He's so weird.
"Can I go yet?" he asks, loud enough to be heard, quiet enough for her parents to pretend that's not rude and for her dad to smile at Mister Ronkuu with a "what can you do?" look that smiles at the corner of their eyes.
"If you're back for dinner," Miss Ke'ri relents, but it isn't a chore to let him go, and he hugs her before he starts off with Mister Ronkuu realizing he'd nicked his sunglasses off of him four seconds too late.
The adults start to talk more grown-up things like.. she doesn't know, milk prices or the possibility of Superman actually being real or something, she isn't listening. Miss Ke'ri invites them over for dinner, though, in a couple hours that fly by super quick 'cause her parents take her with them shopping for things they have yet to get yet, like shower curtains and garbage bags and a package of oatmeal raisin cookies 'cause Dad catches her staring at them and adds them to their cart with an indulgent smile on his face, and then he even lets her choose the color of their bathroom rugs.
She picks bright yellow. Her dad makes a face that scrunches his eyes under his glasses (and it'll take another three more months before she can identify what she or her Mom do to bring that look on and another seven years before every choice she makes as a teenager will bring that same fond, incredulous look back) though he doesn't say anything, and her Mom says that yellow's her favorite color, that they'll look so pretty with the plastered sea shell wallpaper already decorating their bathroom walls, and she'll realize later that yellow isn't her Mom's favorite color at all. It's just the kind of thing she'll realize mothers do or say, and that's really nice, too.
When it's finally time to go back home and next door to the Chon'sin, Mister Ronkuu is wearing a funny apron that says "Kiss the Cook" that Miss Ke'ri ignores every time he manages to obnoxiously catch her eye, and they're so funny! Mom tells all them stories about when she and his were younger and collaged education or something - a crazy time in their lives that makes Dad scoff and Mister Ronkuu laugh even more than he already seems to do, but the topic changes quick and easy before she can seem to catch up. They're talking about movies next, all the ones she's seen which.. no. She hasn't seen that many, really. Not any.
It's then she sorta indirectly learns her parents aren't really television people, whatever that means, but they encourage her to go look at Mister Ronkuu's and Miss Ke'ri's collection of VHS tapes when they offer she can borrow anything she'd like to see. Nothing rated R, he jokes, whatever that is. Miss Ke'ri doesn't laugh.
She's heard of the wonder of Mister Walt Disney, whoever he is, but there's - there's so many, and making these important decisions? All she's had to choose so far have been which vegetable she'd like them all to eat for dinner or which clothes she'd like to wear that day.
So she's standing and staring at all these movies when the front door opens (a different sound than the sliding back door where everyone else is, she remembers), and it's all of two seconds before he speaks.
"You're the girl?" It's Lon'qu, and when she looks, he's already taken off his shoes and socks and left them not-so-neatly by the door. She frowns, and he thinks it's a little like she's turning her nose up at him, and that makes him laugh.
"My name is Robin," she says stubbornly, confusedly. She didn't even know how to begin to work a VCR, but her dad would probably help her.
"Yeah, the girl," he shrugs, moving across the carpeted living room to the side of the television where the shelf of movies she's browsing are. "What are we looking for?"
"You're Lon'qu, right?"
"We met," he says off-handedly, just a little rudely since he doesn't say her name, she thinks, and he looks startled when she tells him so. "You're annoying."
"You were first," she protests mildly, but he laughs again, asks her what all movies she's seen. "None."
He squats to take a better look at the bottom shelf, to bring himself a bit closer to her height to get a good look at this poor sheltered kid that probably has it way worse than him, but then he sorta just shrugs again. "None," he repeats, like he doesn't believe it. "What do you do, then?"
She really likes the Barbies her Mom bought for her. She likes Ken's red Corvette her dad found on the EBay better, though. "Not much."
"Huh. Well. Start with this," he tells her. He pulls out a movie from the very bottom left corner. The Wizard of Oz.
"What's it about it?" she asks him when he hands it to her, her eyes a little too intent on those sparkling red shoes.
"It's about the Wizard of Oz."
"I could have guessed," she huffs, and he rolls his eyes, suddenly all attitude.
"How old are you anyways?" He hands her more titles, all animated it looks like. The Great Mouse Detective. The Little Mermaid. The Lion King. Braveheart. The Land Before Time. She thinks he holds that one a little too possessively, a little too long.
"..You can keep that one," she says awkwardly, half-trying to give it back, half-watching the long-necked dinosaur on the cover walk towards the waterfall. "I'm almost nine."
"No, keep it," he mutters. He glances back to it, though. "I haven't watched in awhile, I'd almost forgotten." And while he's acting a little sad about it, he gives her another film. Jurassic Park. "That should start you off. Then you watch Jaws."
"Isn't that the shark?"
"You seen it?"
She shakes her head. "Heard of it." He doesn't look as impressed. They go quiet, and looks to the pictures on the walls of Mister Ronkuu and Miss Ke'ri and Lon'qu and several others, all growing up, all young again. She likes this, too. "Are we gonna be friends?" she asks him, that innocent, hopeful way only children can manage sometimes that's more endearing than annoying.
Or not.
"Nope," he says lightly, and his smile's not much of a smile when he nudges her arm, gets back up on his feet. "Not with you."
And it's the type of refusal she doesn't want to think about, isn't thinking about, strangely, in terms of family and friendship and how much she wants to stay here. She's just thinking he's annoying and a bit stupid and not very nice at all.
So she shoves him, hard, and he doesn't laugh.
Her dad does, though, when the reason Mister Ronkuu's had trouble with the charcoal all this time is because it's a gas grill.
A/N: Sooooooo, you like? If so, please tell me! It would mean the world to me. Stay tuned for a new chapter on Wednesday! :)