A/N: I was actually terrified of posting that last chapter, so thanks to everyone who read it! Once again, I'm so sorry for the long update, but school is really stressful this year. I've mostly been typing this during Creative Writing workshop time. Zero is named in honor of my best friend's black cat when I was about three or four.

Nepeta had a really bad feeling about Marina from the second she met her roommate. The other girl had long, black hair that was crimped and light blue eyes. Her skin was Seattle-pale and she was frowning. Nepeta had brought all her favorite animé posters and plushies, not to mention her extensive cosplay collection. How could she leave any of that behind? Those items contained her best memories.

"Um…" Marina said, examining Nepeta's Fullmetal Alchemist poster. "What is that?"

"It's Fullmetal Alchemist," Nepeta explained. "One of my favorite animés."

"And that?"

"Hetalia."

"What about that one?"

"Fruits Basket. Another animé."

"So...you're into animé," Marina stated, and Nepeta didn't miss the note of disgust in her new roommate's voice.

This was going to be a long year.

She'd chosen Carleton. Of the seven schools she'd applied to, she'd been accepted into three. Of those, she'd chosen this school. She'd been hoping for a good roommate, but she supposed she got who she got.

The best thing about college was that she was able to talk to her sister much more now that they were in the same time zone (Meulin went to a college in Missouri). In fact, her first night at college, she Skyped her sister.

"Meulin!" she exclaimed the second her sister answered.

"Hey there, little miss Kitty-Cat," Meulin shouted back.

"Keep it down," Nepeta said.

"Is your roommate mean?" Meulin asked.

"No, she's fine," Nepeta answered, well aware that Marina was still in the room. "In fact, she's right here."

"Oh! Can I meet her?" Meulin asked excitedly.

"Sure," Nepeta said reluctantly. "Give me a sec." She picked up the laptop and walked over to Marina. "My sister wants to meet you," she said.

Marina nodded. "What's her name?"

"Meulin. She's deaf."

Marina nodded as Nepeta turned the computer to her roommate. "Meulin, this is Marina. Marina, my sister Meulin."

"Nice to meet you!" Meulin shouted.

"Nice to meet you, too," Marina responded, nodding her head and giving the older girl a funny look. Meulin's mess of thick, dark hair and unnaturally bright green eyes did make a strange combination, although nearly everyone said she was gorgeous. Meulin smiled and said, "So you're my sister's roommate? I hope you two become great friends!" Nepeta winced and tried to give her sister a "cut it out" look from behind Marina. Meulin nodded almost imperceptibly. "Well, I've got to go! Have a fun year, Nepeta!"

"You too, Meulin," Nepeta answered, ending the call. She'd text Meulin and explain about the anime thing later.

Alex, who had gone to Cal Tech, was the next person to Skype. "Nepeta? Can you hear me?" he shouted through the heavy static.

"Yeah!" she yelled back, earning her a very pissed-off look from Marina. "Hold on a sec." She walked around the room, trying to find a place with better Internet. For some reason, all the way in the corner by the window had the best reception. She sat cross-legged on the floor and balanced the laptop between her knees. "Better?" she asked. Her own image and sound had improved.

"Much," he affirmed, smiling. She still couldn't get enough of that smile. She wished she could just kiss him right now, just jump through the computer screen to where he was.

"How's your day been?" she asked. "Your roommate?"

"My roommate's cool," Alex said. "Engineering major and everything."

"A couple of science geeks, then," Nepeta said.

"What about you?" Alex asked.

"My roommate's name is Marina. She's…" Nepeta glanced around the room. Marina had left, probably to run some errand. "I have a feeling we're not going to get along. I dunno…I just have a bad feeling about her."

Alex nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry about that," he said. He turned around suddenly, as if hearing something. "Sorry, that's my dad," he said. "Gotta go, see you soon!"

"Love you," she said.

"Love you too," he responded, closing the call. She smiled as she closed her laptop and put it away. He really could be the one for her.

Although she didn't have a car (cars weren't allowed on campus), she made it to most of her classes on time. Except for Bio 101, which was just at the fucking far corner of the Earth. But it was also her favorite class, so she double-timed her pedaling to bike to that class on time.

Her room was divided precisely down the middle, with her own side full of animé posters, a messy cosplay collection, and a bunch of other stuff that was useful strewn around the place. She didn't have time to clean up; her desk was a chaotic mess and her floor was worse.

But Marina was a neat freak. Her side of the room was completely organized and perfect, everything in place. And that wasn't so bad; Nepeta didn't mind. As long as Marina kept her neat to herself, Nepeta would keep her messy to herself.

Marina did sometimes try to pick up the place, but she never got far. Nepeta's natural tendency was towards mess and a system that made sense to her and only her.

Life went on. Days began and ended, the sun rose and set. The warmth of the summer dissipated and transformed slowly into a freezing-cold, very snowy Minnesota winter. It stopped being practical to bike to class, so she left early and walked instead. She had her thick winter coat and everything, so she was ready for the weather.

When it snowed, the snowflakes caught in her eyelashes and her hair before melting and letting rivulets of water trickle down her hair and face. The cold froze her hair once it was wet, literally froze it so her short, thick hair became a solid, cold mass. She had to take a hot shower or stand near the heater to thaw her head again. But she didn't mind. She liked the winter.

She and Alex were still close, of course. He'd visited her once, and she'd visited him twice. She also saw Equius sometimes, and she often Skyped with Meulin and her mother.

But Alex was really the person who she could always rely on and always love.

And that was why her breakup with Alex hurt even more than she feared.

They'd been working long-distance for four months at that point, over Skype and emails and Pesterchum. She'd seen him three times and every time, he was affectionate as ever.

Her roommate, Marina, was the first to ask why she was sobbing.

"It's just…nothing important," she choked out.

"Then why are you crying?"

Nepeta considered her options. Her habit of saying that it was "nothing" was getting the better of her. She had to talk to someone.

"Alex broke up with me," she said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Marina began, sitting next to Nepeta, who had her arms wrapped around a cat plushie she'd gotten when she was little. "But don't you think you should've waited?"

"What?" Nepeta asked.

"He's the one you cashed your V-card in with, right? Well, you should've waited until after marriage."

"Why the hell would you say that?" Nepeta asked, wounded. "Now? I was half-drunk from that damn spiked punch!"

"Because maybe you wouldn't've gotten your heart broken if you hadn't," Marina said superiorly. "And I've got to go to class now," she added, leaving the room.

Still clutching the cat plushie, Nepeta pulled out her laptop. She could Skype Equius and talk to him. Gog, her roommate was a bitch.

He picked up right away; how could he not? She was infinitely glad to see is familiar face. "H-H-Hi," she stuttered, still crying.

"Nepeta, are you injured? Has someone attacked you? Are you in the hospital? Do I have to fly to Minnesota immediately?" Equius asked in rapid-fire succession.

"I'm fine, Equius," she answered. "You don't have to come here. Don't worry. It's just…Alex broke up with me."

Equius, although he wasn't all that great at expressing emotion, looked truly sympathetic. "I am so sorry, Nepeta. He did not know what he had."

"Thanks, Equius," she said, offering him a watery smile. "I needed that."

"I will be visiting this weekend," Equius informed her. "Would you like me to bring anything?"

"No, but thanks," Nepeta answered. She'd almost forgotten Equius's visit. "I just need to talk it out."

"I will listen to you," Equius stated. She could believe it, too. He'd listen when she babbled incoherently about it.

"I mean, he flew here from Cal Tech and we were out to dinner and it was really sweet and romantic like always, but then he said how we weren't going to work out long distance but that he still liked me and then how he wanted to be friends but I don't want to be friends with him because it would hurt too much and it's just that he flew here because I deserved it but what the fuck is that supposed to mean I don't even…" She trailed off and buried her face in the cat plushie, habitually trying to hide the tears. Gog, what middle and high school did to a person.

Equius was still listening. "It's just…like, is it okay to be upset over a breakup? Cuz there's all this about how women are supposed to be all strong and shit…but it's okay for a guy to cry over something like this? I don't even know if it's okay to be crying...is it okay for me to be crying about this? It's like...is anyone allowed to be weak anymore? What's wrong with being weak?…And Marina pretty much said it was my fault, cuz you know about him and me…"

Equius seemed to take that as his cue to talk. "She is wrong," he stated simply. "This was in no manner your fault and you have every right to have any emotional response to this."

"Thanks, Equius," she said. "You're the best."

She almost detected half a smile on his stony face. She heard a knock and turned around. "Must be Kate," she thought aloud. "I've got to go, Equius, and thank you so much."

"You are welcome," he replied. She pressed the End Call button and answered the door.

It was not Kate but Marina who stood there, looking abashed. "I forgot my key," she admitted. Nepeta grabbed it off the table by the door and thrust it at her unfortunate roommate.

Collecting herself, Nepeta asked Marina, "Why are you so against premarital and gay marriage? Is it a religious thing? Cuz I was raised Christian and my church was actively for gay marriage."

"I'm not religious, "Marina responded. "Not much, anyways. I just don't think it's right to have premarital. It only ends in heartbreak. And…my aunt got pregnant at seventeen."

"But it doesn't make heartbreak any worse," Nepeta said. "Alex and me…it would've hurt a lot anyways. And if you're safe, why should it be such a problem?"

Marina shrugged. "I also think marriage is for just a man and a woman."

"How can you say that?" Nepeta asked, shocked. "Marriage is for two people who love each other! The point of marriage is commitment and promising love to each other forever! Why should it matter what gender they are? I think you should fall for who someone is, not their body!"

Marina clearly had no response for that, because she simply looked scandalized and angry and walked over to her side of the room. Nepeta decided that Marina simply held several very conservative and very wrong opinions and sat on her bed, trying to think of ways to soothe her throat, still burning from the tears.

She didn't leave her room for the whole weekend. She had enough food for the two days and she didn't have any weekend classes. The only event was Kate coming over on Saturday evening with buttered movie popcorn, chocolate, and a stack of romcoms. The two old convention friends sat in the room (Marina had gone home to St. Paul for the weekend) and watched the movies and ate too much junk food.

It wasn't long before Kate, ever the energetic (she reminded Nepeta a bit of Feferi), insisted that Nepeta come to the next meeting of the campus's cosplay club.

"It'll be fun!" she insisted. "The president is really cool and everyone's really nice, I promise! There's animé and Doctor Who and everyone! Please come?"

Nepeta, who still cried some nights, wasn't feeling up to it. She hadn't even considered her cosplays since the breakup two weeks ago. Before then, she'd planned on sewing a Revolutionary War America outfit, maybe a Britain one too. She'd also been considering a peg doll from Doctor Who outfit. Although she wasn't much of a Whovian, she did know the general plot of the show and it would be a challenge.

"Please, Nepeta? You'll have help and everything! You've barely gone out in two weeks!"

Nepeta sighed. "Fine," she conceded. She'd never imagined that the friends she'd made at one of her first-ever conventions could become so influential.

So that Tuesday, she gathered up all her fabric, sewing machine, thread, needles, wigs, and everything else she'd amassed in her sizeable cosplay collection and packed it away in her sewing bag. She grabbed her key and left the room, hoping that Marina had remembered her key this time.

"Hi Nepeta!" Kate exclaimed when Nepeta walked into the room with her awkwardly huge sewing bag. "Come on, I saved you a seat!" Kate was at a table with some other freshmen.

"Wow, this is all yours?" one of them asked. "Hi, I'm Amber."

"Hi, I'm Nepeta," Nepeta said, just a little shyly. "Yeah, it's all mine."

"You sew by hand?" another person asked.

Nepeta nodded. "Sometimes. For big stuff I use this machine I found at a garage sale once."

"Cool!" the person responded. "I'm Kyle, by the way. This is Lila, Thomas, and Emily."

"Nice to meet you guys," Nepeta said. "So what're you guys working on?"

"This coat," Amber answered. "Damn fabric is too thick and it's taking forever. I don't have a machine."

"You could borrow mine," Nepeta said.

"Really? Thanks!" Amber exclaimed.

"Yeah, anytime," Nepeta affirmed, feeling more confident now that she was around people who shared her passions. "I'm in Davis, room 216. You know, it's the damnedest thing; I always end up in room with the numbers two, one, and six or four, one, and three."

"Funny how stuff like that happens," Lila commented.

"Yeah," Thomas said.

Emily looked around the circle of sewing teenagers. "I don't sew stuff," she said. "I do everything but the sewing. Hell, I've been working on my own brand of face paint, but I can't sew."

"Want to learn?" Nepeta asked.

"Nah, it's good," Emily said. "It's not like it makes me any less of a cosplayer or something."

Nepeta nodded, turning back to her sewing and immediately pricking her finger on her sharpest needle. "Gogdammit," she hissed through clenched teeth, blowing on the sore spot as if that would help.

"Thimble?" Thomas offered, holding out a small thumb-protector.

"Thanks," she said gratefully. Why she'd never bought her own thimbles, she didn't know.

She went to cosplay club every Tuesday after. Conversation ranged from the trivial ("So what'd you have for lunch?" "Just a PB and J.") to the deep ("I think that the episode when Rose leaves shows how much trouble the Doctor has expressing his emotions." "Maybe it's a parallel to our society today.") and everything in between.

On this particular snowy Tuesday two weeks before winter break (she briefly missed Sollux and his obsession with the number two), the discussion turned to majors.

"Classics," Lila answered without hesitation. "I'd like to go into literature, maybe publishing."

"I was thinking of plant biology," Thomas speculated. "You know, go into botany or something."

"High-energy physics," Emily said. "I've always wanted to work at the Large Hadron Collider." Nepeta, remembering Jade's ambitions back in eighth grade, smiled nostalgically.

"Liberal arts or whatever major you choose for voice acting," Kyle said after a brief pause. "Go into radio or something. Maybe be a voice actor. That'd be cool."

"Education," Kate answered. "I'm gonna be a kindergarten teacher or something."

"Genetics," Amber stated. "Especially genetic diseases. Because my grandma has Alzheimer's."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Nepeta sympathized.

"What about you, Nepeta?" Kate asked. "I've never asked."

"Biology and acting," Nepeta answered. "I sorta can't choose, you know?"

Kyle nodded. "I might still do prehistory."

Conversation continued, but Nepeta shifted her focus from words to interactions. She watched Amber avoiding eye contact with Kyle, clearly trying to hold normal conversation and failing. She kept a careful eye on Lila and Kate, but also on Thomas and Kate. Kate was somewhere in the middle of the sexual orientation spectrum, so both pairings were possible. At the present, Lila and Kate seemed more likely. Maybe she'd be seeing them in the Starbucks she worked at soon. It seemed that every couple went to the Starbucks at least once, and she wasn't sure why. But it was fun, watching couples come and go. It was always fun.

The spring semester finals were the single most terrifying tests she'd ever taken. No, strike that, ACTs and SATs were worse. But these tests were up there.

She hadn't been in Chem/Phys (a two-year course), which had a cumulative final at the end of two years, so she wasn't used to the cumulative finals. She stayed up late, cramming facts and dates and formulas into her head with stupid mnemonics and ridiculous little jingles. It was horrible and nerve-wracking, and to make it worse she was on her period at the time. So she was also grumpy, craving chocolate and salt, and prone to start sobbing into her textbooks.

This was going to be a long couple of weeks.

She hated the smell of blood. It wasn't just a bad smell, and it wasn't just that she hated her period (though both of those were true), it was the memories it brought back. It was the memories of bleeding to death on the freezing cold, rough pavement. It was that salty, disgusting smell that pervaded her memories of that horrible day in sophomore year. It was the way that when she smelled blood, she remembered every damn detail of the way she crawled across the sharp asphalt towards Equius, the way her heart fluttered and her lungs worked far too fast, desperate for oxygen to get to her brain. She didn't know why Gamzee had spared her head, and she was astounded almost every day that she could still function. The only reminders of the attack were the scar on her left side and the way the fingers on her right hand weren't as nimble as they used to be.

"Sorry, but can you take out the trash?" Nepeta asked Marina. Her head was spinning and a curtain was closing on her vision. She could tell that if she had to deal with that smell for one more second, she'd black out.

"Why should I?" Marina snapped. "Seriously, get it yourself."

"I can't…" Nepeta trailed off as she lost consciousness.

She came to on her bed, Marina shaking her shoulders and shouting, "Nepeta! NEPETA!"

"Wha—hi," she said, shaking her head.

"What the hell was that about?" Marina asked.

"It's…the smell," Nepeta tried to explain. "The smell of blood. I can't stand it."

"I don't like it either, but I don't pass out from it," Marina said. "Are you alright?"

"There was just…some stuff happened. It was a while ago. But it's just sort of a long story."

Marina just nodded.

Nepeta hated thinking about the blood.

She went home for the summer, of course. She and Kate took the train home together, although they lived on opposite sides of the burbs. Nepeta got off second, and for a long moment she was terrified that no one would be there. She'd gone home for Christmas and on a few weekends and spring break, but this was for a good couple months. And she'd be going to AWC with all Edward and Natalie and Kate. They planned to all go to ACen in sophomore year, too, now that they'd gotten used to college. ACen and AWC were going to be their traditions, the way they stayed in touch. Not to mention that all the others, the ones whose real names Nepeta didn't know, would be with them.

"Nepeta!" her mother called. "Let me help you with your things, dear. Oh, it's so nice to see you! How are you?"

"I'm great, Mom," Nepeta said, hugging her mother. "How have you been? Is Meulin home yet?"

"She's home, too, love," her mother said. "Oh, I've missed you! The house is so empty without you two!"

Nepeta smiled, hugging her mother again. It was so nice to be home.

It was a good summer, an excellent summer. She stayed home with her mother, and though she helped with house chores (her mother now lived alone with two cats; how could the two sisters leave their mother to do all the housework?), it was a relaxing time. She hadn't seen Meulin or her mother in ages; she and her sister were never free on the same weekends and their spring breaks didn't match up.

The cats, her cats, were as friendly/aloof as ever. Mimi, the sweetheart calico, came up to her and practically begged to be petted. Zero, the black cat, was completely aloof to the two sisters coming home.

Her mother made them steak and mashed potatoes, their favorite dish from family dinners when they were little. Her sister turned on the subtitles on the TV and hugged everyone goodnight every night. Nepeta locked the front door every night and helped her sister clean up after dinner.

All her old friends were home for the summer. All of sixteen of them went to the pool, to the movies, to the park, just like when they were in high school. Nostalgia for when she didn't have to support herself (just a year ago) flooded her every time the friends convened at another old haunt.

They were her family. Her old friends, her convention friends, her sister and mother and aunt and blood family. All of them.

She missed her family.