because i'm not inspired to make an actual TJC chapter so have this songfic instead. besides, if there's any song out there meant for nene, then it's this one

disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within. lyrics belong to guns n roses

if i say i don't need anyone

i can say these things to you

Nene might only be six but she knows a lot more than her parents think she does. She knows that her brain doesn't work like her neesan's or anyone else in her rundown neighborhood; she knows that her father's a cheating bastard and that her mother is no better; and she knows that poor little Nene Wakahisa is unwanted.

Unwanted by everyone but her neesan, and that's alright because Nana is the only one that Nene wants either. She doesn't want her parents' dirty looks and hush-hush arguments and them locking her in her bedroom when she can't smile properly and "shames" them for her weirdness. "Shame", because Nana's never ashamed of her, her neesan lets her know late at night that Nene is loved by at least one person and that makes all the difference so don't let anyone tell you otherwise ok imouto-chan?

Nene nods, and Nene laughs the best she can only for her neesan, and she might only be six but she already dreams of the day where one day she'll be the strong one, the protector to the only one that matters.

'cause i can turn on anyone

just like i've turned on you

She's ten when the Fujitas come knocking, and she doesn't hesitate for a second. Nana was also ten when she first started, her neesan is the only one that Nene trusts—not her parents, not the funny talking doctor they make her visit, not the other girls up and down the crackling sidewalks—and that's all Nene needs to convince her.

But she's promised her mother that she'd be good, not like her degenerate of an older sister, and Nene frowns a bit because this is the first time she'll lie. Nana's Fujita sisters, Junko and Sera, they reassure her that's it's not really a lie just a modification: Nene of course will be good, and obviously not like Nana at all because Nana has a battle umbrella as a Fujita and for all Nene knows she might use a meteor hammer.

It's true, and Nene smiles as wide as her weirdo brain lets her and they pull her into the roller rinks, the road rage, the disco dangers that breathe life back into her stifled lungs. There's even girls around her age also being inducted, and they don't think she's just the quiet Wakahisa shame, they like her! Poor little Nene has friends now, and she picks out a sample blonde wig without a moment's pause.

When she comes home in her new riding kimono and cherry red lips, her mother wails and her father demands why she's done this, and Nene just turns, turns, turns her back on their anger in her well-worn skates.

i've got a tongue like a razor

a sweet switchblade knife

All Fujita inductees spend a year shadowing an oneesan, learning the ticks and trade of San Fransokyo's infamous roller geisha. They get new names, learn to fight on skates, how to turn their bodies into violent art, and they must know how to properly chew on razorblades within that year or face humiliation.

Nene is Anzu now, and she and her best friend Kanon/Kuri take to razorblades with more enthusiasm than the other inductees. It's not fun at first—Anzu chips a molar when the metal bends beyond her expectations, and there's a lingering gouge in her left cheek that tears open when she speaks too much. But the golden rule of the Fujitas is to never ask questions and to only speak when spoken to, so there's less blood in her throat than the silent giggles that come from watching her neesan Nana/Momo smash in the teeth of a rival gangbanger.

Kuri loses a premolar when the razor breaks and cuts deep into her gums, and Anzu worries that she's taking much longer than Momo ever did. Momo reassures Anzu as she grits her teeth against the blunt of the blade that she's doing just fine; Sera/Nashi took 11 months to stop splitting her tongue, and Junko/Yuzu stabbed through the roof of her mouth to her nose when she chomped down too hard.

It's dangerous bloody work, her neesan taps Anzu's lingering milk teeth, but it makes you strong. And you're so strong already, imouto-chan, just imagine what fun we'll have.

Anzu smiles, and within 4 months she can chew a blade into a perfect sliver and spit death from painted lips.

and i can do you favors

but then you'll do whatever i like

Anzu hides her face behind her trailing sleeve, because the Yama Brothers intimidate her just a tiny bit and while she might have the best moonface in the Fujitas, her lips still tremble and she doesn't want to be yelled at for mockery.

The elder Yama examines them all with eyes like the Chinese triad boys near Anzu's apartment, the ones who call on girls with high heels and fishnets all hours of the night. He lingers on Eun-seo/Kaki's insanely beautiful face for a moment, but Beatrice/Suika smirks at him and she's not yelled at for mockery, Big Yama grins and asks Yuzu, "Who do you have in mind for the new groups? Now that there's some spunk in these inductees, I want the best for my lovely girls."

Yuzu puts Anzu with Suika and Kaori/Ume, and it's a good balance: Anzu has her meteor hammer to knock the lights out of anyone far from range; Suika has metal fans to slice apart those up close, and Ume's umbrella has impressive mid-range reach. Sure, Anzu might want to be with Kuri and Rohini/Zakuro because they're her closest friends out of the newest Fujitas, and Suika scares Anzu a bit, and Anzu still clings to Momo's shadow…but Ume clasps her hands with Anzu and Suika squeals about being put with Momo's little sister, she's heard so much about Anzu!

Anzu's wanted, Anzu's loved, so when Suika asks if they can take the missions in the jankiest parts of San Fransokyo to impress Big Yama, Anzu agrees; these missions often take place with Momo's squad anyway, and she's got all of her sisters' backs as they have hers, this is her family and Anzu will protect them all with her bare hands.

here i am

and you're a rocket queen

In the Fujitas, Anzu wears her bright yellow long haired blunt bang wig; in civilian high school, she has short teal hair any scene emo queen would die for and the lavender eye liner to match. Her parents hate it, her shrink asks her if she's rebelling without a cause, and her classmates ask her if she's a bot fighter since she spends so much time in the warehouse districts with hair and eyeliner like that.

Anzu does know her way around a bot battle—the Fujitas are the Yamas' muscle, they moderate the fights and sometimes start and end their own; she was there when mouthy bot fighter Abigail Callaghan got her face smashed in by Big Yama, if that wasn't enough carnage to prove her point. And despite her mother calling her a stupid useless girl for her perpetual blankness, Anzu is smart and can slap together a passable mech given parts and enough caffeine. So she lies (modifies, twist the truth like the chains of her meteor hammer) and says that she does, but she prefers just to watch the Fujitas, aren't they just kick ass?

Her classmates agree in whispers and stencils of the Fujita's wanted posters. The roller geisha, the rocket queens of San Fransokyo, may the gods have mercy on any fool who steps against them. Not even the bike couriers want to race against them, and Nene smirks beneath her frozen lips, she cackles with overcast glee because she's Anzu Fujita, a rocket queen sitting right next to a boy so terrified of their chaos that his desk rattles from his quakes.

She's powerful, she's dangerous, she's a protector of the most notorious women to grace their nightmares, and she never wants to be anything less.

i might be a little young

but honey i ain't naïve

Anzu looks down at the twisted body, the person that Suika…killed, right? She span him around so fast in her skates that she threw him clear off the roof ten stories to the bike racks, and no human can survive having their spine broken like themes at her feet. But he had a gun to Ume's face, that rat bastard didn't deserve the bite of Suika's blades, Anzu's razor spit.

He won't be missed, not by anyone important, and it's too much hard work to care about some gang sludge when she's got homework and training and gossiping to do with people that are important. So she skates away, finishes her patrol, and presses her lips together when Momo massages her legs in their cramped bedroom. Their mother's out drinking, their father's out cheating, and oh yeah but that's the first dead body Anzu's seen in person and it's kinda freaking her out a tiny bit.

Not too much though, she reassures Momo this three times before her neesan stops asking questions and just rubs her back. Her neesan says that she's killed people before, it's really nothing special when you realize that everyone playing this game knows the risks, and Anzu's young yet, she doesn't have to one-up Suika or anything.

Anzu doesn't plan to, she's fine playing her own rules in this game. Still, he died in such an ugly way, Anzu makes a note that when she does kill someone—and she will, all Fujitas do—she'll be a bit more elegant than that.

here i am

and you're a rocket queen, oh yeah

Anzu links arms with Kuri and Suika, and they spin around the roller rink laughing. Zakuro and Ume join them, they and Vainavi/Remon and Rosa/Mango, and they are the best-best friends Anzu has in the Fujitas. The sisterhood is her family and every sister is beloved, but these are her favorites, the ones she hangs out with outside of uniform, and here they are in their schoolgirl skirts and tye dye makeup and everything a true roller rink girl needs.

Sure, some of the sisterhood has abandoned them—Sachika, formerly Banana, and Eun-seo, formerly Kaki; may the traitors trip forever down an endless staircase. And sure, Big Yama and Mr. Yama have been fighting a lot recently, one brother sending them out on missions that irritate the other. Nashi's little daughter Juncho might become a Fujita in a divided household, but Anzu's a good obasan like the rest of her sisters, and no one will come to harm as long as she's protecting them.

Not when they laugh like this, rosy cheeked and care free and flying at the speed of the DJ's best tracks, taking selfies and making memories that Anzu will cherish until they day they pry her skates from her cold dead feet. They skate together for hours, bitching about teachers and boyfriends and the big nosed psychiatrist that says Anzu has schizoid personality disorder. Schizoid doesn't even have a proper word in Japanese or Cantonese, the SAT-talking skid mark, they all swear to smash in the quack's office windows and Anzu feels loved.

Momo cheers them on from the sidelines, holding Juncho up so the toddler can wave with sticky hands, and Anzu awaits the day that she can be Juncho's oneesan, foster the next generation of roller geisha.

i might be too much

but honey you're a bit obscene

Anzu's thirteen so she knows all about the warm ache deep in her guts whenever she sees someone cute. And that tall dark handsome stranger standing by the street corner is making her ache in all sorts of needy ways, maybe he'd like to play with her like how Big Yama plays with Suika and Nashi, or how the gang ninjas play with Momo.

She's thirteen, she can play just fine, right? Right.

So she skates closer, and it's not a complete stranger; that's Elio Miura, a bot fighter who deals drugs more and more as the police crack down on the fight scene, and he's about five years older than her but that just means he ought to have experience, right? She blushes beneath her makeup, and fumbles with her sleeves, and asks if he needs an escort to somewhere better.

Elio turns to her, and there's hollows in his cheeks that weren't there a month ago, but then again the new police chief spares no mercy to those outside the law; the bruise peeking beneath his shirt collar was put there by a baton. He raises his eyebrows from her emphasis on escort, and just smiles about how she's cute, she ought to go home, her sister must be missing her.

Anzu wants to play, she pokes him in the chest and giggles razor sharp about all the fun they can have together, the ache goes deep within her core into her bones and makes her entire body sweat with nerves, with fear, with the forbidden fruit of all the things that her parents never told her about. So maybe he could show her, right?

He kisses her forehead and tells her to go home, and there's something so broken about his voice that the ache evaporates into sadness, into sympathy because that kind of brokenness doesn't come from a baton. Anzu wants to ask who hurt him so she can protect him, but she doesn't ask questions and he doesn't give answers, and she leaves him alone in the night with a note to ask Mr. Yama if he can host just a few more bot fights.

i've seen everything imaginable

pass before these eyes

Anzu doesn't need convincing to go with Momo to the next My Nuclear Romance concert, not when she's already memorized all three of their albums and is dying for the fourth. So they put on ripped jeans and lavender eyeshadow and magnetic studs, and enjoy being civilians for the day. Tall boys put them on their shoulders and Anzu gets her first kiss with a busty scene queen to the anthem of her teenage chaos. It's glorious, it's everything neon and dirty that Anzu lives for, and the pictures her neesan takes with her show off Anzu's true smile.

But then when the concert ends and the nightlife begins it's less fun, especially when the drugs and rival factions replace the band and the riot police start sniffing around. Anzu and Momo end up with MNR backstage, and the ultra-dreamy vocalist holds Anzu safe as the crowd erupts into a war and rubber bullets ricochet to Anzu's terror.

Terror, she can't help but be afraid when the girl she kissed is sprayed in the face with the kind of pepper spray that even half Chinese girls would call too hot, and she looks to Momo for guidance. Momo just raises one eyebrow and twists her lips, pure neesan disdain, and asks Anzu if she's really that scared when she's got her neesan and her own strength to keep the pretty boys safe.

Anzu nods, slowly at first then firmly, and the MNR boys laugh when she puffs up her petite chest and swears to keep them safe. The laughter trails off when the riot police switch to actual bullets in the face of a drugged out meth gang, and Anzu keeps her chin up and watches, waiting to see if she's needed. People get shot, people are probably dead in the stampede, and the police are little better; it's chaos, it's ugly chaos that Anzu really doesn't have the energy to commit to, but she's seen worse.

When the riot ends and she gets a bunch of pictures, signed merch and the vocalist's number to text cat pictures to, Anzu isn't afraid of anything that any civilian can push at her, not when she's got Fujita flower bombs nestled beneath her skin.

i've had everything that's tangible

honey you'd be surprised

Anzu loves to bake, she trained herself on Momo's knock off Easy Bake oven when she was younger than Juncho and even at that age knew the secret to the perfect brownie. So of course she bakes for the Fujitas, cake pops and mille-feuille and cream puffs, and everyone from her squad sisters to the Yamas love her desserts.

Some of the drug dealers affiliated with Big Yama want a taste, and it's easy enough to make pot brownies and speed cakes for them, it's not like Anzu's worthless mother ever uses their oven anyway. Some of the Chinese triad boys catch her in civvies with a fresh supply and demand a cut, but incidentally Momo and her squad roll up to curbstomp them, and the rice krispies are saved.

She tries them all herself at least twice, and likes what the drugs do to her expressions but dislikes how they affect her balance and SPD medications; the speed cakes are her favorite and tells Suika and Ume to keep her in moderation. So she gives out her extras to her sisters and to the kids at the roller rink just to see them loosen up, and prides herself on being a good baker.

Momo says that she ought to go to culinary school instead of SFIT; even though Anzu wants to go to SFIT to prove to her parents that she's worth more than they can ever dream, she admits that it would be good practice for her LSD puffs.

i'm a sexual innuendo

in this burned out paradise

Anzu adjusts her kimono when Big Yama leers down her front, and she's got small breasts anyway so she has no idea what he's looking at. Suika doesn't know either, admits to Anzu and Ume that he's becoming more and more erratic while Mr. Yama pulls for more power. Ume wonders if the rumors of the new police chief daring to arrest Big Yama are true, and Suika despairs of her bed being visited anytime soon.

Well, the police chief can certainly nail Big Yama on statutory rape charges, and Suika laughs when Anzu points this out. If they're ballsy enough to ask Nashi when she had Juncho, or track down retired Betsy/Orenji about her own daughter Irene, then more power to them because the sisterhood doesn't take too kindly to inquiries about their fun games.

So Anzu puts on her makeup, adds apricot blossoms to her wig, and tries to enjoy the smirks and stares that older men and women give her. Momo teaches her how to adjust her moonface to maximum bitchface defense, Suika teaches her how to properly flirt back and keep them off her true scent, and they all watch the growing confrontation between the police and San Fransokyo's underworld grow to a boil. At the very least Anzu knows what role they'll expect her to play to a gang of policemen asking for special questioning, and only a non-Fujita would be surprised as to where she can store extra razorblades.

if you turn me on to anything

you better turn me on tonight

She skates for her life, the gang members are gaining on her in their hot rod and they taunt her with threats that curdle her blood with fear. She'd rather be shoved off the roof to an ugly death than to what they're promising her, she needs her squad sisters but they're somewhere far away in the current meltdown destroying San Fransokyo's underbelly.

Anzu doesn't even have her meteor hammer, torn from her grasp when the police raided the Fujitas' dungeon and Nashi needed a weapon. The water treatment plant close to the warehouses is expansive though, she skates into the tunnels to try and lose them but she breathes too loudly, she's too afraid, they're going to mutilate her before they kill her and she needs her neesan she needs her older sister—

They get out of their car and chase her down, they pull off her kimono and throw it into the water flow. The floor floods so she can't skate and their hands grab at her half naked flesh, tear off her wig and leave fingerprints in her makeup. She screams for Momo and Momo's there, Momo's followed them, Momo impales one of the gangbangers with her umbrella and rips out the eye of another. How dare they turn on a Fujita who has never done them harm, how dare they turn on the one rule of rules: never ever hurt Anzu, never ever hurt Nene Wakahisa.

So they hurt Momo instead, they shoot her in the chest and run off so the blood doesn't cling to their clothes. It clings to Anzu as she cradles Momo close, as Nene cries into Nana's hair and begs for forgiveness. MomoNana tries to speak but she bleeds out too fast, and AnzuNene screams into the night that just gets darker and darker like the hollow despair opening in her heart.

i see you standin'

standin' on your own

Anzu (Nene?) looks at her hands, then at the broken piles of her and her neesan's belongings. Their parents must've finally kicked them out, judging from the lack of care, they must not know

how could they know it just happened AnzuNene's hands are still red caked chalky red

and it might be the middle of a normal Tuesday afternoon but she's completely alone on the street. She in her muddy kimono and bloodied wig, her caked chalky hands and garish white makeup; she stands in the wreckage of her life and she can't go home, there is no home no sisterhood no anyone but herself, and who wants to be trapped alone with poor little not-Nene Wakahisa?

She picks up a perfume bottle from the pile, and it's her neesan's favorite scent, and she doesn't know she's crying until she's on her knees with the bottle clutched to her stomach and all the ghosts lingering in the smoky sky witnessing her screams. She cries, she cries until Anzu Fujita is just a stained glass memory beneath her cracked kneepads and there's only the husk of Nana's abandoned sister holding what will be Nana's urn; there's nothing to be saved, not really, because now she's on her own and look how small her hands are.

So not-Nene rises, and chokes on those tears until she's sobbing silently, and carries what she can.

it's such a lonely place for you

for you to be

Nene (not Anzu, she can't be Anzu anymore, Nana's dead and she can't go back) graduates at sixteen, walking across the stage to no applause and going home to the homeless shelter. But that's ok, because she's going to SFIT and no one can take this new life away from her, not her acceptance letter or the half of Nana's ashes that she got to keep from her parents.

And sure, she might be homeless and orphaned and burdened with too much blood, but she has skills. Her baking skills, her technological skills, all the ways to hurt someone and skate away scot-free from her upbringing, and her moonface is a skill within itself. She'll make it, she'll bring San Fransokyo to its knees before she'll let them win and see her cry ever again.

Even when her sisters denounce her, call her a traitor who let her neesan die, she'll stay strong. Even when Yuzu keeps her away from Juncho and her squad sisters her best-best friends abandon her like trash, Nene will be alright. They don't know that Juncho is really Junichi, she worries for him…but in all selfishness she will be ok without her family.

She'll just be alone, and that's alright, she's got plenty of practice since Nana's funeral, she didn't need them anyway.

if you need a shoulder

or if you need a friend

Kanon comes back into her life when she starts at SFIT as a kinesiology major, and Nene opens her arms wide without a second thought. Kanon had also abandoned the Fujitas in the fallout of Big Yama's arrest and the warehouse raids, she went straight underground and didn't even know about Nana's death or Nene's shunning and Kanon rants about the hypocrisy of their sisters when they too abandoned the Fujita sisterhood.

So Kanon's still her sister, the only one left really since Kaori won't apologize and Nene indulges in a bit of selfish silence; Kanon is still her best friend, and Nene's life is good again. With this energy she makes new friends and friendly acquaintances at SFIT: Delly, Antoine, Taro and Megumi from the kinesiology department, the only ones to understand Nene's zeal for the art of human movement. Rebecca too, from their shared biology class who studies traditional Chinese medicine, and Isabelle who tutors Nene in history as part of her education major.

When Nene opens a dessert bar on campus to put her baking to use, her friends are her first customers and bring their friends too, and she's glad to see that Abigail has all her teeth back. More friends, more bar flies, more people to fill the blanks in Nene's life with the laughter she still misses from her Fujita years. And when the memories are too much, Kanon is there to hold her together, arms linked as Kuri and Anzu, and it's all Nene could ask for in the next two years.

i'll be here standing

until the bitter end

Nene closes her bar for the day, puts on all black, and goes to the hospital where Kanon's parents kill her. They kill her, they turn off the machine keeping her alive, and Nene holds Kanon's hand until she's certain that the only warm left in those bones come from her own. She doesn't cry, not really, but she glares at the mother and father that didn't care when Kanon ran away to become a roller geisha and only cared when the city made them pay for Kanon's life support.

She gets half of Kanon's ashes, as is her due, and puts them in Kanon's favorite perfume bottle, just like Nana. Nene even goes to the funeral, where a handful of people watch half of Kanon Akiyama go into the earth, and she stays when everyone else leaves.

Nana never got a headstone so this is new, this is too public for a Fujita, and Nene hates everything to do with how she got here. She nurtures her hate, chewing razorblades and bending them into cranes to string in Kanon's memory.

She hates Beatrice, that evil bitch who betrayed Nene and Kanon and four other sisters who didn't deserve to die like that. And she killed her halfway, Beatrice strapped to the same machine that Kanon was put in, in revenge for Kanon and Eun-seo and Mari and Sachika and the still healing carve wounds in Nene's chest that ended three years of happiness.

She hates Kaori too, for good measure, even when Kaori comes later and stands just close enough to let Nene see the remorse on her face; empty remorse, what good is it now that Kanon's dead and four other girls with her. And most of all, Nene hates herself for letting another loved one die in her arms, for being so useless after Beatrice's attack that she could only listen to Kanon choke to death on her own blood clots. So when her soul screams and bleeds from standing alone yet again while her life hollows into the dark, Nene savors the pain, and keeps standing.

no one needs the sorrow

no one needs the pain

Nene liesmodifieslies to the other Big Heroes about her grief, making them believe that she's functioning as well as she did before Kanon died. She's not, she's actually worse off than even right after Nana died, although from what she tells Hiro she plays off Kanon's death in favor of the shared pain of an older sibling's death.

Nana still hurts as much as the night Nene let her die, but at least she got one day to cry for her. Kanon's dead and she never cried for her, she stayed blank and accepted six new people into her life and turned Kanon's guest bedroom into Junichi's safe spot. She befriends Elio properly this time and opens her arms whenever Marys needs to vent or Gogo needs to argue or someone instead of her needs to cry, and she's in agony but she can manage. Pain makes people stronger, stronger Fujitas and stronger Wakahisas, she can deal with the hurt.

It's the urge to cry, the urge to sob and give into sorrow and sadness that brings her down, because she can barely emote properly as it is with her SPD and she hasn't cried since Nana's death. She wants to, but she doesn't because she can't when people need her, and she knows more than anyone else in San Fransokyo the pain of being alone when hurting; she'll never break down, not when people need her, and she's still a protector, she won't let any other soul feel as she does as long as her body can still move.

i hate to see you

walking out there

out in the rain

Nene skates wherever she can, even in the long road from the kinesiology labs to her loft, and even in the rain. Her favorite professor asks if Nene wants a ride and Nene half-smiles, the best she can do for him, and waves away his concerns. She likes the rain, she says, it's not easy to skate in San Fransokyo's deluge and she just loves a little challenge now and then.

But the rain is cold, and she doesn't risk her headphones, so the rain is also loud and silent in her ears. She replays her conversations with Delly and Antoine and Taro and Megumi to that silence, she plans goof time with them and Rebecca and Isabelle and Elio, her handful of friends that don't know the hidden ugly half of AnzuNene and therefore are that much more precious to keep.

She also plans time with her team, Marys and Fred and Hiro and Abigail and Honey and Wasabi and even Gogo who is shaping up to be the sort of frenemy that Beatrice used to be, always pushing Nene's buttons and challenging her to be faster stronger louder because Nene is boring bland beige and GogoBeatrice is vibrant sex on wheels.

Maybe that's why she never walks home with them, especially Gogo; the rain is too loud in its silence but so are they in the life that Nene so desperately craves, and she can't let herself believe that she'll be safe with them. Not after Beatrice, not after Nana, not after the lies and the heartbreak and her parents throwing all of her stuff to the curb when she was fifteen and drenched in her neesan's blood.

Nene twists her lips like MomoNana used to, and spies Wasabi driving the other nerds home because oh, it's a typhoon outside, Nene didn't notice. Wasabi pulls over and Gogo yells at her to get in the car; when Nene hesitates, Honey and Gogo just pull her in and squish her next to Hiro and Marys, who pull her into a conversation about rocket engines...Nene talks as much as she dares, and it's enough for now.

so don't chastise me

or think i, i mean you harm

Junichi cries in the basement, stifled scared little sobs that hurt Nene deep in her bones, and when he sees her at the staircase he straightens up and closes his lips Fujita tight and pretends that he's not in the middle of a dysphoric meltdown. He wrings his hands and he knows that his chores aren't done, that he's late for his shift, he's sorry he's sorry he'll make up for it in overtime she doesn't even have to pay him he promises he'll be good.

Nene asks if his mother ever hit him for being Junichi instead of Juncho, and Junichi cries again, absolutely mortified from the way his face flushes and his spine curves and his hands claw at his hair. Nene keeps her moonface blank, texts Ai to cover Junichi's shift (her juniors Ai Chiyo Yue Sonu Xiaolan are as protective of Junichi as Nene is, such good kids better than the Fujitas in regards to loyalty), and sits with him throughout the night in their dark little basement and listens to him spill all the madness their three year separation has left on his psyche.

Junko didn't hit Junichi explicitly for that, but she was very authoritarian and was quick to smack him around for untucked shirts and messy homework piles and whatever else that had set Junko on edge. Aunt Sera and Aunt Beatrice did what they could, but then Sera spent two years working in Thailand abroad and got pregnant with her own husband so Junichi was secondary, and Beatrice…well, Beatrice was madness, look at what she did to the rest of Junichi's aunties. But it's ok now, Sera was just around yesterday with her baby and gave Junichi the number to his half-sister Irene after all of these years, it's all good he'll be good he's sorry.

Junichi promises that he'll keep the crying to a minimum, and Nene pinches his arm; he should be thankful that he can cry so easily and bleed away that grief, don't ever think that one is lesser for being able to emote. He sniffles and Nene folds him into her arms, and tries to remember the lullabies she sang to him back when she was Anzu and the world hurt less. She can't remember, so she makes a new one, just for her sister-son, and her moonface cracks a bit when he smiles.

of those that take you

leave you strung out

much too far

baby—yeah

Nene hasn't slept in 72 hours, her final project still needs fine-tuning and she's helping Hiro with his nanobots and she wants a speed cake but she's been clean for years and doesn't want to start up again when she's got Junichi and her teammates depending on her to be sober. So she makes her special espresso shots for the other nerds in the lab and downs her own caffeine. Junichi and Ai are running the bar in her place, they're good with managing finals week customers, so Nene's affairs are set and she wills her heart to remember that, beat a little slower won't you?

Three days later she's still awake and her hands won't stop shaking, she sees dead people in the corners of the room judging her work and she's only speaking in Japanese by this point because Cantonese trips around in her mouth and English makes no goddamn sense to begin with. Delly passes out on top of her computer, Antoine folds a thousand paper cranes out of his failed paper drafts, Taro stares at a wall and Megumi dyes Nene's hair dark wine red to match the color of their bitten lips. Rebecca comes by and keeps them awake even further with menthol and spicy tea, and Nene talks on the phone with Isabelle for two confusing hours about the history of bath houses.

Another three days later and she tells Beatrice to fuck off because she doesn't know Vietnamese and it's not her fault that her skull caved in so easily, Beatrice should've drank more Ovaltine as a child so that's no skin off Nene's knees. Nana moderates a spirited discussion between Nene and Delly about the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in treating delayed onset muscle soreness, because Nene and her neesan are very well versed in the art of using generic ibuprofen to treat the wear and tear of Fujita shenanigans so stay in your lane Delly-chan. Delly laughs and Nene calls Elio to bring them all pizza since he lives closest to the better vegetarian pizza joint in the college area, and when Taro's not looking she cries and asks Kanon to forgive her.

Yet another three days later and Nene's finished with her work Hiro's work her friends' work and maybe she's about to have a heart attack (again?) but she can't sleep she can't sleep she's wried to the core and there's more dead people clawing at the windows so if she goes to sleep everyone will die and AnzuNene's a protector she can't let her loved ones die again.

Junichi comes to bring her home, and brings Fred as backup because Junichi plays dirty he knows that Nene holds Fred in high esteem and that Fred's stupid puppy dog eyes get to her, and they lie her down in Fred's stupid luxurious guest room with ASMR playing and seven blossoms tea in her stomach and Baymax monitoring her strung out heart and promises that yes she can sleep no the demons can't get in because the sprinklers are on yes she can speak Cantonese to Fred if she's tired of Japanese honorifics no she's not letting them die it's alright, go to sleep.

Nene giggles, half mad but reassured, and sleeps for an entire week before waking up and demanding a pancake party for all of her precious ones; she almost killed herself over childhood obesity data so she wants to enjoy her own indulgences now please and thank you.

don't ever leave me

say you'll always be there

Elio carries her into his apartment and Nene apologizes for bleeding on his carpet, the blood's not even hers but she's still sorry. She's sorry for bleeding on his carpet, and attempting suicide when he was out for a smoke, and becoming his friend in the first place when she knew she was so messed up from Nana and Kanon and therefore no good for him.

But can he blame her, for seeking out someone she recognized from the days when she was happy, when she didn't want to die? It might not have been the best of memories for either of them, but the hollow despair beneath her skin made even those dark nights a beacon, something to cling to.

Nene apologizes over and over, as he washes the blood from her body and dresses her in an oversized night shirt and makes sure that she didn't crack her head open from her rooftop spill. She's only banged up her wrist, she's fine and she's sorry for making him worry, and he kisses her forehead to close her lips.

He apologizes (why, why is he saying sorry when Nene's the one who fucked up?) for not being there when Nene obviously needed someone to listen, to protect her as she's protected others, and Nene clasps her hands over the broken ugly sorrow that wants to pour out of her mouth. He asks what happened, and Nene reveals the truth: a man shot his own daughter in front of Anzu Fujita the mighty Big Hero, and the girl bled out beneath AnzuNene's hands while her little sister screamed for AnzuNene to save her neesan, and Nene failed, Nene failed and she's just a failure and now a little girl will have to live through what Nene's been suffering and it's the fourth anniversary of Nana's death tonight so of course she'd let another neesan die in San Fransokyo's madness, she's worthless so worthless she just lets everyone die so she wants to die too.

Elio wants to take her to the hospital and Nene begs him to not leave her alone there, she can't have anyone else leave her there not after Kanon met her end there and Nene killed Beatrice and Nana was cremated there, she can't take it anymore please don't leave her like her family did.

Elio stays with her; he takes Nene to the psych ward, he's there for her overnight observation and calls all of Nene's friends over to give support, he brings her homework and takes back doctor's notes to her professors, he sleeps over every other night in Nene's flat to give her and Junichi outside balance, he drives her to her new therapist and listens to her complain about her new medication, he doesn't tell a soul about her secret identity, and all of the other little things. Elio doesn't ask questions, he upholds his promise; Nene wonders why, and remembers the broken something in his voice a lifetime ago, and makes a note to ask her own questions one day.

All he asks for in return is for Nene to stop apologizing and to get herself healthy again, and Nene puts all of her effort into it. She goes to her therapist three times a week and takes her medication and writes down her feelings before they push her off another roof and uses her kinesiology knowledge to get an internship that gives her extra purpose in life, and she tries to smile more often. She thinks it still looks ugly and weird, but everyone else thinks that it's lovely, so she doesn't argue.

She's not a liar anymore, not even a modifier, because Elio didn't leave and she's not one to break a promise.

all I ever wanted

was for you

to know that I care

Nene looks down at the birthday cake, then at everyone singing to her—it's everyone, her teammates and her juniors and her kinesiology friends and so many others from her past—and covers her mouth. But they see her smile anyway, and they sing louder, and her moonface splits with a natural grin.

The kinesiology nerds hold her upside down when she blows out the nineteen candles; Rebecca and Isabelle and Elio help Nene's juniors spell her name with illegal fireworks outside; Fred gives her piggybacks everywhere while Kaori and Marys lead karaoke battles; Gogo punches Nene hard in the shoulder and admits that she's the best frenemy in San Fransokyo; Abigail, Hiro, Honey and Wasabi face off against the nerds in embarrassing Nene the most; Junichi hugs her waist and kisses her cheek, and Nene laughs because everyone's here just for her, for boring bland beige Nene, poor little Nene Wakahisa.

Nene laughs, and Nene cries, because she is wanted.

One part scene, two parts sads, and three parts apricot sour: the perfect Nene Wakahisa cocktail

Can't tell you if the last three drabbles have happened yet in TJC, and I can't tell you if they'll happen as written here…but Nene's got a lot of on her plate, and the way to a happy ending with her is mired with lots and lots of sad possibilities.