There's a specific type of story that usually begins with "a friend of a friend of mine".
You've read a number of them in your pursuit of learning everything and anything you could about 21st century literature (anything to feel closer to your mother, after all). Dirk, nerd about everything pre-Condescension and lover of anything ironically terrible, was particularly helpful in introducing you to this genre (for the week that he was into it).
Absurdly you find yourself unable to stop thinking about them now, these grotesque stories. These stories that no matter how unlikely, no matter how unbelievable, always come with the tag line that they're absolutely, one hundred percent true.
You really aren't sure what to make of Jade Harley when she comes back from the dead. She seems more upset about the whole holding you captive and menacing you with promises of gross bodily harm under mind control thing than you actually feel. To be fair, if you were forced by the Batterwitch into threatening one of your best friend's alternate universe daughter-mom with torture, you might feel awkward for a little while too.
Unfortunately, you don't really have much time to worry about Jade's feelings right now. You feel bad and you'd like to tell her that there are no hard feelings, but you don't have a lot of time until you're all going to have to fight a large muscle-y green guy with laser eyes of double death and you're barely talking with your own friends again.
You're probably not the right person to talk to her anyway. You're really not used to being around this many people who are involved in this many squabbles (you mean, there were always the carapaces, but they're generally pretty amiable when they're not eating mutant cats) and all the tension is making you antsy. You really wouldn't know what to say if you tried and she has her own friends who have known her for much longer.
Still, every "she's not herself" strikes a chord of mingled concern and curiosity that you can't shake. You just don't see any way to break the wall that's built itself between you.
As with most things you try to avoid, the decision is taken from you more quickly than you expect.
It happens in one of the first few quiet moments you've had since you were all reunited. It starts with the last name you expect to hear from the last person you expect to say it with such fondness.
You immediately start bombarding Jade with questions about Calliope, speaking so fast and so excitedly that it takes you a while to realize what has just happened. It's the stunned, disbelieving way that she's staring at you that makes you finally realize that in one thoughtless move you've just shattered the tension that kept the two of you separated. And it wasn't hard at all.
Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you've just met a friend of a friend of yours. Before now, you might have thought that the events that will follow would be unlikely, perhaps to the point of unbelievable. This is the start of your love story.
You start noticing Jade a lot more from that point on. It's actually kind of embarrassing how much time you spend watching her and you really hope that she doesn't notice. It's also kind of amazing that you didn't notice until now that she also uses riflekind.
It seems only natural, in another one of those rare peaceful moments, to challenge her to a shoot out.
She completely kicks your ass.
Talking to Jade about guns is way different than talking to Jake about guns. Jake loves guns with an equal opportunity enthusiasm that's contagious and endearing. Jade loves rifles with a specificity and dedication that rivals your own.
This moment, watching Jade shoot cans with impressive accuracy...
This moment, her glasses catching the brilliant neon lights of LOPAN's skies...
This is the moment you fall in love with Jade Harley.
It would be unsettling how much you and Jade have in common, how many things that you never thought that you could share with another person that she completely gets, if you weren't so smitten.
(Also there's the whole thing where you've all accepted so much weird shit as a fact of life that it would be nonsensical to get freaked out by something this mundanely unusual, but that's besides the point.)
You and your friends are all probably a bit odd by most people's standards. You've definitely all had unusual upbringings and most of you have no real experience dealing with other people. Your quirks have caused their share of friction, but you all generally accept that you'll have them.
You still have your insecurities, though. You know that being raised by carapaces may have left you with more oddities than most. You can never quite rid yourself of the anxiety that the others might find you a bit too strange, that they might tolerate but wouldn't really understand the behaviours that serve as the clearest evidence of your upbringing. It's become worse since you've stopped drinking. Now that you're sober, you genuinely wouldn't want to fall off the waggon for anything in the world, but it's hard sometimes to not have anything to hide behind.
It's a shock when you learn that Jade was raised by carapaces too.
Well, carapaces and god-dog who she later became fused with through godtier magic (long story). Jade embraces her quirks and oddities with an easy acceptance that you envy and admire.
More importantly, she accepts all of yours.
No, she understands yours.
When the two of you are lucky enough to get double watch together, you spend the long hours of the night telling stories about your respective childhoods. You tell her more than you ever told Jane in those long months of beating back nigh unkillable monsters before shit really hit the fan. You tell her more than you ever told Dirk in your entire lives.
It's during one such night that, out of a combination of boldness and sleepy thoughtlessness, you first hold her hand.
You feel her squeeze once, gentle and firm. She never pauses in narrating her story.
It's toward the end of everything that you find out about Jade's passion for science. Even as you feel the terror of the coming battles mounting and try to hold down the panic that you could lose any one of your friends forever, you both eagerly turn to this subject of mutual interest as a way to kill the long hours of waiting.
When you both run out of experiments that you've done to talk about, you begin discussing experiments that you will do. Never just experiments that you want to do, but experiments that you will do. After this, when everything is over.
An odd, giddy feeling bubbling up inside you, you tell her that you bet that she'd look hot in a lab coat.
In a casual tone that only sounds a little forced, she suggests that there's an experiment that the two of you could try right now.
When you kiss, it's not perfect. Your noses bump awkwardly, her glasses dig into your face in a way that's kind of painful and you both probably end up with a little hair in your mouths.
There are no fireworks. No romance novels will be written about this kiss.
But it's sweet and exhilarating and you can feel her smiling against you.
You think this is an experiment that you'd like to repeat.