When Loona was a pup, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and believing that she would be adopted any day now, they'd pick her up by the scruff of the neck when she "misbehaved". When she rolled in the dirt, when she played rough with the others (even if the others were also having fun), when she tore off stupid clothes that itched and scratched and weighed her down like waterlogged fur, when she started food fights and tried to catch a flying rasher of bacon out of midair.
She hated it. Hated the sense of total powerlessness, her control over herself taken away from her as she was hoisted to the time-out corner. The tug of rough claws on her fluffy silver coat, and the condescending voices as they told her off.
She resented the stupid grown-ups and their stupid rules. She resented that they could just take her away from her fun.
It made her want to do the things the adults didn't like more and more. Just to get back at them.
...
When Loona was an older pup, when her eyes had lost their youthful sparkle and her fur had become rougher and pricklier (just like her personality), she would fight with the other kids.
They would poke her, jab her, with fingers and claws and sticks and sometimes even cutlery. They would point at her and laugh, goading little laughs. They would give her looks and pull faces, and she knew when some twerp was making fun of her even if they weren't saying it out loud.
So, she would fight them.
And she would get in trouble for it.
The grown-ups could no longer lift her by the scruff of the neck, and she had proper fangs and sharper claws now. So they would jab at her with sticks and canes and prods. If she tried to run, they would get out the catchpoles.
When they caught her, they would muzzle her, restrain her, march her to her cell and lock her in there. Sometimes they would forget to remove her muzzle.
Powerless. Caged. Trapped.
She would rage against it. Tear at the muzzle with her paws until her snout was scratched and bleeding. Slam her body at the bars until she felt the bruises start to bloom under her fur. Do whatever she could to shake off that awful crawling feeling all over her body.
Then she would sink down to the concrete floor and cry.
...
When Loona was a teenager, the onset of legal adulthood bearing down on her like an avalanche, the staff seemed to give up on her. Just as she'd given up on them as well, given up on any hope of finding demons who really wanted her in their afterlives in a genuine way. Not as a pet, not as a servant, but as family.
She'd given up on family a long time ago.
There were fewer punishments. But was being stuck here not the worst punishment in itself? Every day she was reminded that she wasn't wanted, that her future would be just an endless cycle of this (just without the surety of a roof over her head).
She shared her cell with a cycling roster of the 'other delinquent of the week' - hellhounds of varying ages, genders, sizes and strengths. The orphanage didn't have the luxury of space (or the luxury of compassion) to separate out the cohorts. Sometimes they ignored her, hunching quietly in their corner, rocking back and forth, or making little distressed noises. More often than not they wouldn't. They'd invade her space, bug her, nudge her and jostle her and sometimes the nastiest, slimiest ones would try and cop a feel.
She kept on knocking them out for that.
The staff didn't seem to care anymore. They didn't try and stop her, but they kept on carting away the old cellmate and bringing in a new one a day later. Rinse and repeat.
Other demons came through the orphanage, and they always overlooked her, or looked at her with scorn or disgust or fear. There was no need for the cruel administrator to tell her that nobody was going to pick her - Loona was smart. She could tell.
She had given up. The orphanage had given up. She'd almost resigned herself to being tossed out on the streets and enduring a rough, wild existence of mere survival for the rest of her days.
Almost.
She still desperately didn't want that life.
Now Loona is 22.
She lives in an apartment with the imp who, out of the blue, adopted her when she was 17. She sleeps in the only bedroom while he sleeps on the couch, she stashes her booze in the same kitchen cabinet he does, she even works at the cruddy little business he runs.
She doesn't know why he can't fucking take a hint.
She doesn't like being touched. And yet Blitzø keeps on touching her. Hugging her, stroking her face, pressing kisses against her cheek. Brushing her fur the wrong way with his calloused red-and-white hands.
She growls, she snaps, she pushes him off. Sometimes, if he's really fucking clingy, she'll kick him away.
And yet Blitzø keeps on coming back for more.
He coos over her and cuddles her like she's a baby in front of her co-workers (the uptight, criticizing imp who reminds her of the therapist at the orphanage; the hick who definitely doms him and refuses to learn Loona's name for the first week she works there which grates).
He gushes that she looks "perfect" when her makeup's shitty and one of Hell's preeminent popstars and her drop-dead hunky bodyguard are in the same building as them. She nearly slips and calls him 'dad' (something she promised she'd never do to prevent herself from getting too attached), and she shoves his dumb starry-eyed face away.
He gives her a stupid sloppy kiss while they're on a mission - in the middle of kicking the asses of doofus human agents too, damn it, why did he have to ruin her badass moment? He leaps away before she can retaliate, so she takes out her frustrations by biting the head off the next human to cross her path.
He charges at her on a dank and gloomy LA corner, clearly going in for a hug, babbling about how he's "never going to replace her no matter what" - and yeah, that threat from earlier still stings, doesn't he understand how much the suggestion of being replaced hurt her? - so she kicks him between the legs. Now things are even between them.
Loona's pretty sure she's given Blitzø every indication that she doesn't like being touched, and yet he still does it. She knows he'll do it again tomorrow, she knows he will try and pat her on the head as he hands her a mug of too-sweet, too-hot coffee, or play with her tail like it's a fucking stim toy. Just like he bounced back from when she said he was "not her real dad" on that Spring Break shitstorm, and was all lovey-dovey and fatherly the very next day.
It drives her insane.
But, in a way, she doesn't think she could live without it.
When Loona was an older pup, a teenager, starting to realize that no one loved her, no one wanted her, the only people who might want her would want to use her… she'd begun to hug herself.
She'd wrap her arms around herself and huddle on her wooden slab of a bed, pressing herself as far into the corner of her cell as she could.
Sometimes she'd cry too.
Actually she'd cry more than she cared to admit.
If the other kids saw her and laughed at her, she'd thrash them. They'd get carted off to the infirmary, the blood would get mopped up and Loona would get put in solitary for a day. Fine. She didn't need anyone else to see her at her weakest. If they weren't going to help her they didn't deserve to put themselves in her presence.
Fuck them. Fuck them.
Alone in her cell, with only the harsh scent of peroxide cleaner for company, she'd squeeze her eyes shut and try to muffle her sobs in her throat.
...
When Loona was 17, fresh out of the orphanage, trailing behind this imp who for some reason had picked her, the lost cause, out of all the other hellhounds, she hugged herself again.
When he led her down the streets, up the stairwell of a newly-built yet still-crummy residential block, opened the door to his apartment and waited for her to step over the threshold, she'd kept her arms closely around her middle, her paws squeezing her upper arms.
The imp, Blitzø-with-a-silent-O, noticed, and he tried to reach out to her.
She snapped and recoiled from that outstretched hand, waiting for what always came after that.
And Blitzø backed right off… but he didn't leave. He didn't scold her, he didn't punish her. If anything, though she didn't dare to hope, it looked like he understood.
He made dinner for her, loaded her plate with more unidentified meat and expired tinned beans than his own, and sat at the other end. He gave her space. He didn't intrude on her. He asked her what she wanted, and waited for her to reply.
She watched him clear out the single bedroom later, cramming all his possessions into cupboards and drawers and shelves, and she hugged herself again. She didn't know how to process that. She didn't know how to process all of this.
When Loona emerged from the bedroom the next morning, not daring to believe that this kindness was real, her eyes fell on Blitzø, still slumbering on the couch. He'd curled up in the fetal position and wrapped his arms around his middle in his sleep.
Just like she did.
The emotions she felt then were so big, so confusing, so painfully hopeful, that she could barely stand it.
She didn't know what to do with those feelings at all.
So she buried them deep, and let them contract into something small enough she could ignore them day to day.
Now Loona is 22, and she's talking down a tearful teenage owl who'd run away from home, as far as a demon could go from home, because her parents were having a divorce.
She listens, watches, waits, as her fellow demon wipes away tears and asks Why does he hate her more than he loves me? in a wobbly voice.
She remembers the looks she got at the orphanage, those disparaging, glares, and wondering what she was doing wrong. She remembers her first nights there, when she'd wondered where Mommy and Daddy were, and she'd howled and begged asking when they would come back, why weren't they coming back . How the other new kids there would tearfully ask the same questions.
How all those questions went unanswered.
She remembers the times she and Blitzø have fought or argued for real… and how, when it was his fault, he goes to great lengths to make up for it afterwards. The times he gets protective and possessive over her, stresses the fact he adopted her like she owes him something, then backs off and lets her do whatever without complaint for a few days. The times he's sleep-deprived and bitchy when he's had the nightmares he refuses to speak about (she doesn't get on his case on those mornings).
Loona draws from the only experience, the only answer she's found for herself when she responds to the sniffling owl. That it's not simple. That everyone has issues, and fucks up (especially dads, especially Blitzø), but that doesn't mean they mean to fuck up.
She'd seen first-hand how worked up Stolas was, that he'd burst into the office in his true eldritch form practically the second Blitzø put down the phone. She's not privy to the details of Stolas's divorce, but Loona doesn't doubt that the prince who her dad sleeps with loves his daughter more than he hates his ex-wife.
Trying is more important than you think, she says, and the two of them watch as the smoggy evening skyline of Los Angeles turns a bit less toxic and a bit more magical in the light of the rising moon.
And she realizes that maybe she's a hypocrite. She's giving Octavia advice that she doesn't act on herself. Moxxie accuses her of not trying, of being lazy and incompetent; and maybe he's a little bit right, maybe that's why his words sting so much and she has to bite back at him with insults and jibes that press all his OCD buttons.
She remembers how hard Blitzø tries for her. That he gave her the only bed in his apartment when he first adopted her. That he tries to remember her favourite meals, her interests (he gets it wrong half the time but he never stops trying and trying again). That he takes her to Stylish Occult. That he wants to spend time with her in general, even if he can get clingy about it.
She tries not to think about that.
After Octavia has handed her back the grimoire, as she's about to open up the portal to wherever their dads are, Loona offers her paw to the owl. A hand up, a concord, a bit of emotional support cause she knows this shit sucks, and she knows she wanted someone to grant her that crumb of comfort once.
Octavia hugs her instead.
It surprises her. But it's not unpleasant. It's not unwelcome, it's not an invasion of her space. It's a thank-you, pure and simple.
So Loona returns the hug with a smile.
And she struggles not to recall Blitzø's hugs and close physical contact, or wonder what they might mean.
She knows.
Deep down Loona knows that Blitzø loves her. Unconditionally. He's not roleplaying as a father, he is trying his damnedest to be one, and a better one than most fathers in Hell at that. He fucks up, but he keeps on trying. He frustratingly, embarrassingly heaps sappy affection on her, but never forces her to do something that she's truly uncomfortable with, that she doesn't want to do.
She knows that.
She knows that she kinda-sorta-maybe loves him back. Fine, he is her dad. She'll never admit that to anyone except herself, but it's true.
Maybe she should tell Blitzø that too, someday. Maybe she should be a little less rough on him, someday. Maybe she should bite the bullet and tell him that she doesn't like the parental PDA all the time, with words.
But Loona's not ready. She's not.
She can't.
Something deep in her mind whispers that Blitzø still might have enough of her one day, enough of her temper and her roughness. That he'll stop trying to hug her and start trying to replace her; and if she bares her heart to him it'll hurt even more if he - when he -
She doesn't like to dwell on it. On that possibility.
Distance has always been safer, gentler, less painful for her.
So she sidesteps his attempts to smother her when they get home that night. She accepts the dinner he makes and the barely-chilled beer he proffers with a grunt of assent, and lets his babbling stream of one-sided conversation wash over her as they eat.
She doesn't object when he shuffles a little closer to her on the couch as they watch TV, later. It's been a long day, and they're both tired, and Blitzø's been all out-of-sorts since he went spying on M&M at Ozzie's so maybe he deserves a bit of a break.
And maybe it's nice to have a peaceful moment where Loona can allow herself to be convinced that she has a home, a secure home; and a little two-demon pack to call her own.
...
There's still no way in hell she's allowing Blitzø to rest his head on her shoulder, though.