Lucy Collins was, in many ways still a child. A lack of proper nurture growing up had skewed her development, leaving her lacking the ability to think things out fully the way adults did.

Sure, she didn't see the world as sunshine and rainbows like an actual kid. She did however see it from a very small prospective, often forgetting other people's feelings, or forgetting that there was a world outside of her own personal bubble.

This could and had lead to some very bad situations, but to counteract it her brain had developed a sort of Jimmney Cricket voice in the back of her head. This voice both spoke and sounded like Dr. Wong. How did you end up here? What do you remember before coming here?

"Dennis?" she said, looking up from the over-easy eggs he had made for her.

"Mm?" he hummed offhandedly, carefully removing the shell from his hard-boiled egg.

"Where are we? The last thing I remember was sitting with you in the park." she frowned. "Actually, I was there with...Barry?"

The relaxed posture her friend had had vanished immediately, and Lucy was surprised to see the stiffness that hadn't been present since they'd been young. Dennis had always been a closed off person, tense and mistrusting of the world, but around Lucy that had always faded away. Because he trusted her, didn't he?

"We, ah...A lot's happened, since we saw you last Luce." he said nervously as he smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle on his pants. "Kevin didn't...he didn't really do well without you..."

"What happened?" Lucy sat her fork down on her plate and resisted the urge to move closer. "Is he okay?"

"Well, no. No, he's not." Dennis admitted. He wasn't quite sure how to tell her everything that had been going on, but he also knew that he didn't have it in him to lie to her. Still, he pulled off his glasses and used a cleaning cloth to wipe at a smudge that wasn't there so as to avoid looking her in the eye. "After you left, he kind of shut down. Patricia, the kid and me, we tried to help but..." he sighed and shook his head. "The more he pulled away from the world...the more people came into existence to try and help him..."

Lucy paused as it sunk in exactly what he was saying. "...How many?"

"Twenty-three in total, including me." Dennis informed, choosing to omit the detail of the 24th alter that was slowly coming to be.

Unaware of the storm brewing in her friends' shared mind, Lucy held a hand to her mouth in shock as tears of pity pooled in her eyes. She wasn't stupid; she knew that Kevin's alters only came to be in harsh, painful conditions that no one should ever have to go through. She had borrowed enough medical journals from Dr. Wong through out the years, attempting to understand the complex mental traumas within her own head and the world around her. Split personalities were fairly common, but 23 of them?

"...I'm sorry..." she said after a long moment, feeling rather foolish for it, but not knowing what else to say.

"Not your fault." Dennis shrugged, putting his glasses back on and pushing them up his nose. He chanced a look at her and felt his heart break a little at the tears in her eyes. Sweet Lucy Collins. The only person in the world who'd ever cry over them.

Too late, he felt the familiar tug of Hedwig stealing the light away from him. The boy had seen Lucy crying and had instantly become worried. "Don't cry Luce..." the boy pleaded, reaching out and taking her hand across the table.

Lucy looked up at him, having sensed the shift in the air. She smiled and wiped at her eyes with her free hand. "I'm fine Hedwig." she assured. "I'm just sad that you had to go through all the pain you did all these years."

"But it's gonna be okay now!" he said, squeezing on her hand. "He's gonna protect us! He's gonna make sure no one ever makes fun of me ever again. And now that you're here he can protect you too!"

"What are you talking about? Who's he?"

Hedwig's smile slipped and he looked down nervously. "I'm not thuposed ta thay."

"Hedwig..."

"No!" he exclaimed. "I'm gonna get in trouble!"

"Okay, okay! Calm down." Lucy laced her fingers with his and felt the tension slowly slip away. "If you don't wanna talk about it, we don't have to." she assured. "...How about you tell me what you've been up to? I'm sure you've gotten even better at drawing your pictures."

This had the desired effect, as Hedwig lit up and nodded. "Yeah! I just got a whole new box of crayons! They're in my room, come'on you can meet my hamsters!"

As a child Lucy had gotten very good at working around the triggers that could set off Kevin and his alters. She had figured out early on that pushing too hard on the wrong things would make them lash out or close up entirely, cutting off any growth into their relationship. Apparently this was a basic psychiatry trick; working slowly towards the issues as opposed to jumping into the deep end.

Despite these behaviors, Lucy could still hear the Wong Cricket voice in her head telling her that something was wrong and needed to be addressed. The voice was in the back of her head however, drowned out by her humming along to the music Hedwig had playing.

"Watcha drawin'?"

"It's a window." Lucy informed, holding up the paper that featured a blue sky. "I figured this place could use one. See?" she held the bottom edge of the paper. "This one's closed, and this one's open. Closed, open." she made a show of flipping the paper up and down to show the second drawing below.

"Cool!" Hedwig exclaimed, his grin as bright as the sun. "Can I hang it on my wall?"

"Sure." Lucy smiled at him.

He jumped up, dropping the purple crayon in his hand as he did. Lucy giggled as she watched him dig through the drawers of his dresser, mumbling something about poster tack. Her eyes wandered to the drawing that he had been working on. Frowning slightly, she spun it around to see it properly.

A large black something with red eyes and sharp teeth was chasing after a group of stick figures. It had one in it's hand, dangerously close to those teeth. On his far shoulder, a purple stick figure with a triangle dress and blonde hair was along for the ride.