The next morning, Yarne woke up before his alarm could go off, a cold sweat drenching his body. He'd had a nightmare, one that he'd forgotten just about all of the details of when he opened his eyes, but one aspect of the ordeal haunted him as he got out of bed and went to take a quick, lukewarm shower to clean himself off. He could hear it echoing in his mind, his mother's voice calling him hopeless over and over again, for no reason he could recall other than the fact that she'd been there, staring at him over some vast space, repeating the word that made him feel incredibly small until he broke. While he knew it was most likely a stress response to what he knew was coming that night, the fear that it was something that was going to happen in a matter of hours took hold in his heart and made for a completely miserable day at work.

When he came home, he was still slightly panicked about the idea of having to face that sort of treatment in his own house, but he was able to at least keep it together long enough to come inside, lock the door and change his clothes into something decent for the guests coming over, and head into the kitchen to get started on cooking. Kjelle wasn't back yet, which was predictable enough given her schedule always having some weird kinks to it when they had plans, and she'd left him a list of all the things she needed him to do without her sitting on the counter. It was signed with her name and a little, messy smile that made him grin in return, reminding him that even though he was worried about what would happen that night, she was going to support him regardless.

Somewhere in the middle of getting a boiling pot of vegetable stew, carrot-heavy as requested by his mother, put together on the stovetop, he heard the door unlock, open, and then relock several times after closing. "It smells pretty good in here, I take it you've started with the things that need longer to cook?" Kjelle called out toward him, despite still being near the door. "I would've been home sooner, but I had to ask several people for rides before Effie finally just came back and got me."

"Yeah, I'm working on the stew now, there's some of those other things in the oven but I'm not sure I did them right," he replied, suddenly very thankful that she'd come in alone and wasn't inviting others inside to help with preparations for the dinner. "You'll have to check them. When you're ready, that is, I don't want to rush you."

For a moment, all he could hear was the bubbling of the broth on the stove, before the sound of the bedroom door slamming closed told him that she had other plans for that moment, meaning that checking the quality of his cooking wasn't a top priority. In fact, it was nearly half an hour later when Kjelle finally came into the kitchen, dressed about as nice as she possibly could be with her hair freshly washed and trimmed up in the front. "You're going to have to fix the back for me later, but it was getting a bit long and I want to look my best for your parents," she explained, shaking her head and sending little sprinkles of water in Yarne's direction. "Even though I'm sure they're going to come in here looking like they always do, it's the thought that counts."

"Mom will make it a point to at least have her and Ribbon looking nice; can't say the same for Dad but we'll see." Yarne grabbed the spoon he'd been using for the stew, offering it over to Kjelle. "You want to stir this and see if it tastes right to you?"

She looked at the spoon, then up at Yarne, only to scrunch her face at him. "I think it'll taste fine, you don't need me to try it," she said, before throwing the door to the fridge open and reaching inside, pulling out the bottle of fancy wine that was just under half full. "Hey, do you think we should've gotten more of this before tonight? Your mom loves this stuff, doesn't she?"

"I think we've got enough, but maybe you can see if there's somewhere nearby that sells it? I'm not really familiar with that sort of thing…" It was true, Yarne couldn't even remember any times he'd needed to go inside of a liquor store, much less somewhere that would sell expensive and unique wine such as that one. "Mom would probably appreciate it if she—"

"Yarne Leichtfoot, look at this right now." Whatever he was saying didn't seem to matter to Kjelle in that moment, as she thrust the bottle of wine in his direction in time with using his full first and last name to get his attention. "I hadn't bothered reading the label until now, couldn't remember what this was called, and look at what it says. Just look." Her insistence on getting him to read it was made clear with how she was tapping at one specific spot on the bottle.

He grabbed the bottle out of her hands and raised it closer to his face so that he could read the small print, dark writing on an even darker label. "Laguz Gardens, it's a special brand for the different years and the cultures that celebrate them," he said, recalling that explanation but failing to see why that would matter any. Looking past the bottle, he could see that Kjelle had her phone out and was searching something, as evidenced by her angry typing, and because she wasn't elaborating further he went back to straining his eyes to see what else the label said. "Made using a recipe from taguel history, that makes sense and matches what Mom said about it being specific for this year."

"Read what's under that," Kjelle snapped, her eyes shooting up at him from her phone, gaze narrowed as she watched him go back to reading. "The part she didn't bother telling us."

While he wasn't sure what had made her so upset on a wine bottle label, Yarne figured it was safest to humor his girlfriend and kept trying his best to read what it had to say. "Specifically formulated to…promote…" At once, his mouth felt dry and he couldn't bring his lips together to form the next word that he'd just read.

"I think this wine's not just something that your mom insists on drinking for its flavor." Her voice cold as she put her phone away and took the bottle back from Yarne, him still trying to get the last word out, Kjelle set the bottle down on the counter and tried her best to not knock it back into the wall behind it. "I looked it up, the whole brand exists for the purpose of helping people in their specific 'year' get drunk enough to…you know. Do that."

Finally able to speak, Yarne squeaked out, "Mom gave us a bottle of taguel fertility wine and we've gone through half of it before realizing it?"

"I mean, that's what it looks like here, yeah," Kjelle replied, glancing toward the bottle on the counter before shuddering. "Good thing that there's an absolutely zero chance that it's done anything. For the first time ever, I have to say I'm thankful about that."

Competing emotions built up inside Yarne as he went back to stirring the stew, not wanting to think about what life could have been like had he been dating someone who wasn't very open about her shoddy genetics and her body's almost guaranteed inability to have children naturally. On one hand, he was angry at his mother for putting them into the awkward position they were now in, but on the other he was confused, unsure of why she would have done such a thing without telling them first. "I wonder if Mom knows that's what this is all about," he said after a while, wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt. "Maybe she just knows it's a special wine for the year of the rabbit, maybe she doesn't know what it's advertised as being used for."

"Uh, your mom's not a dumbass, she's definitely aware of it. That kind of manipulation is completely up her alley, you and I both know it." Her annoyance was completely justified, and when Yarne heard the shattering of the glass bottle moments later, he knew that Kjelle had just done what she felt was right to deal with the problem. "I'd say too little, too late, but it's the thought that counts on this one," she declared, as she began picking up the pieces that had broken off of the bottle in the sink. "We're not letting her play these mind games with us, even if we both know they aren't going to be working here."

It made perfect sense that his mother would be trying to manipulate them in some way, but Yarne didn't want to talk about it. He just went on with cooking and getting things ready for when the rest of his family got there, and after she cleaned up her mess Kjelle joined him, even if it was clear she wasn't fully on board with doing it any longer. That became even more obvious when she started cutting corners and making small changes in steps that they were supposed to follow when cooking things, all in the name of not caring any longer about what the opinion of their most important guest was.

When there was a knock at the door, Yarne was the one who had to go answer it, because he didn't fully trust that Kjelle would ever go over and answer the door in the first place. He unlocked it, relocked it, and unlocked it again, opening it to reveal only his sister standing on the other side. "Hi Yarne! Surprised to see me?" Ribbon asked, putting her hands in fists under her chin and leaning forward toward him. "Mom and Dad are getting the things they brought out of the car, they'll be up in just a second! Can I come inside?"

"Uh, sure," he replied, moving out of the way so she could dash inside, yelling her greeting for Kjelle as she came in. While that was happening behind him, he watched as his parents closed and locked up their car (not nearly enough times for his liking, but he couldn't do anything about it), and started their way up toward the front door. He did notice that his father was holding a lot more things than his mother was, but that didn't seem too out of place given how she was cradling what she did have quite carefully in her arms. Once they were close enough, he gave them a greeting that was returned quickly by them both, but nothing more was said until everyone was inside and the house was properly locked up.

"I brought you something important," Panne said the first chance she could, offering the loaf of some sort of bread to Yarne so he could take it. "The bread is a sweet one, like what we used to make together, but that isn't what's important here." Sure enough, under the loaf she was holding an envelope, the perfect size of a birthday card. "Your father may have given you gifts last week, but what I have here is better than anything he could have given you."

Based on the way Ricken seemed to tense up and shift from one foot to the other at hearing that, it was clear that he didn't feel the same way, but Yarne didn't know how to call attention to that without offending his mother at the same time. "I'll have to see if that's true soon enough," he replied, holding the loaf of bread in one arm and extending the other to take the card from Panne, but she refused to hand it over. "Oh, can I not have it?"

"Not right now. There's a time I want to give this to you, and it needs to be a bit more special than us just standing around like this." She kept the card close to her chest as she walked to the cleared-off kitchen table, five mismatched chairs sitting around the edges, and picked one at the head of the table to sit down at. "I'd assume that dinner should be ready soon, based on what I know you're making."

Before he replied to his mother's statement, Yarne looked at his father, who still seemed highly uncomfortable with what was going on. "Dad, am I going to want to open that card?" he asked quietly, just so that Ricken could hear it, and when he was met with silence he knew that it was going to be a bad time when that card got opened. But he couldn't let Panne know he knew that, so he swallowed down the fears and addressed what she'd asked. "It's just about ready, yeah. Kjelle and I have been working really hard since we both got home to make sure everything's perfect."

"It definitely looks like what you'd make, Mom," Ribbon called out, still in the kitchen from when she'd rushed inside. "I bet it's going to even taste as good as—hey, why's there glass in the sink? Did Yarne drop something?"

He was offended that it was his name being thrown out about being the one responsible, but he'd have rather taken the blame for it than the truth come out. Of course, Kjelle didn't know that was the case and she was quick to reply with, "Nope, I destroyed something that I wish hadn't ever come into this house in the first place. You can ask your mother about that one, she should know exactly what it is."

At the table, the look on Panne's face when she heard that statement was one of pure surprise, which quickly turned into eyes narrowed at the woman responsible for finishing making her dinner. "I take it that you learned about the bottle of Laguz Gardens, then?" she asked, her voice flat but clearly amused with what she was asking. "Surely you destroyed it now because there's no further need for it, hm?"

"I mean, there was never a need for it to begin with," Kjelle replied, her words slow and deliberate, "and I don't know how you didn't know that. Thought my mom had run her mouth about that little issue to everyone she possibly could when we'd learned about it. I know that she couldn't keep it to herself, she wanted to get support from everyone that she could about that whole problem."

"Trust me, knowing that your feeble little body—" That choice of words was met with an immediate gasp from Kjelle, but Panne continued undeterred, "—is functionally unable to conceive a child naturally without a miracle taking place was a big part in me gifting that wine to you to begin with. The taste might be questionable, but with diluting it enough you can drink far too much to resist what it wants you to do, and a less-than-one percent chance is still a chance, regardless of how unlikely it is."

"Mom, did you ever stop to think about how…wrong? Yeah, how wrong that is for you to do to us?" Yarne, coming over to the table to sit down and face his mother as she admitted to her actions, almost wanted to throw the bread she'd given him at her head, but knew that would cause more problems than it was worth. Instead, he set it down and calmly placed his hands together in front of him. "Besides, why would you try to influence us having children in the first place? We're not even married, that's not something that we've even talked about, all those things that people are supposed to care about."

"Ew, do I have to listen to this grown-up talk?" Ribbon loudly asked, covering her ears and running for the oversized chair, just to get away from everything as best as she could. She was over there making loud noises to drown them out, but they were able to continue talking anyway.

Even being pushed in the metaphorical corner for what she'd done, Panne remained steadfast that she was in the right for her actions. "The situation does not matter, Yarne. It's the year of the rabbit, and as an adult taguel you have a responsibility to take on, whether you think you're ready or not."

"A responsibility?" he repeated, a sinking feeling beginning to take hold within him. He was glad he was sitting down, because he could tell that his legs were trembling as he realized what that meant. The fact that he'd pieced together months before came to him, rearing its ugly head at the most inopportune time, but he couldn't ignore it any longer. "Mom, is that why my birthday is in the year of the rabbit, and why Ribbon's is, and why…?"

"Mine is as well, yes," she answered, without him needing to finish the question. "As was my mother's, and my Nonna's, and every other taguel in existence's. It's the way the culture worked, each generation existing within a single year, just like how so many other cultures around us work. It's tradition, so to speak."

The house grew silent, minus the sounds of food finishing cooking and the occasional high-pitched whine coming from where Ribbon was still trying to drown everyone out. From where he was still standing, Ricken looked like he'd gone completely pale at what was transpiring, and Kjelle was standing in the kitchen, stunned at what she'd heard. "That's, uh, that's a lot to take in," Yarne said after several minutes of just staring at his mother, while the world around them slowly started to return to normal. "Would've been nice to know that before right now, but…"

"You'd figured it out on your own, more or less, you just didn't know that I expect the same of you as my parents expected of me. As their parents expected of them. So on and so forth." That was when Panne slid the envelope over toward Yarne, him gingerly grabbing it and picking it up. "I suppose now's as good as time as any for you to open that. Unless you want to save it for after dinner."

"He probably should," Ricken cut in, sounding slightly worried about what would happen once it was opened. "We would hate for everything they've done for this evening to go to waste, wouldn't we?"

It was decided that yes, it would have been a bad idea to let everything go to waste, so Yarne had to tuck the envelope aside until after they'd finished eating the majority of what had been made. Dinner was relatively quiet, the only person really interested in talking being Ribbon and even then, without anyone to talk back to her she grew tired of trying after a while. It was clear that the pre-dinner revelations had been too much for some people to look past, and there wasn't a single moment during the whole meal that Kjelle said anything to anyone aside from Yarne, and Yarne wouldn't speak to his mother but he did address both his girlfriend and his father at different points. He'd been so afraid of things going poorly in other ways that he hadn't anticipated this being the way that their monthly family meal ended up, but they were all together, they weren't complaining about the food they'd been served, and no one was actively fighting. For a moment, everything seemed like it could end up being perfectly fine.

Then the meal ended and the expectation was there for him to open that card and see whatever horrors awaited him inside, and suddenly nothing felt like it was fine after all. As he and Kjelle worked together to clean everything up from dinner, there was an unspoken worry between them that something was going to go wrong once he opened that card, and every time he would approach the table where it was still laying, in view of everyone in the room, he could feel his girlfriend silently begging him not to touch it. That could only work for so long, however, and once there were no dishes left to be taken away there wasn't much left to do except open the card and unleash whatever was waiting for him in it.

He sat back down to do the job, his mother having never once moved from where she'd been sitting in all of the cleaning so that she could be another silent reminder of what he was expected to do. "It's after dinner now," Panne reminded him, looking at the envelope with a genuine smile on her face, not one tainted with manipulation or malice. "Go on, when you're ready, I think it's time."

From where she'd been sitting the whole time as well, Ribbon leaned into the table, her elbows firmly planted underneath her as she tried to get as close as possible to what her brother had in his possession. "This better not be another one of your adult things that I don't want to hear," she said, looking a lot less happy than her mother did, but still quite curious about what was about to happen.

"I don't know what it is," Yarne mumbled, as he picked up the envelope, feeling around its edges to tell that it was indeed a card of some sort, with something inside of it that he was going to have to look at and pretend to be interested in. "But I do know that if it means this much to Mom that she had to give it to me tonight, it has to be something important."

Slowly, as to not rip the envelope too badly but to also make sure he didn't hurt himself, he slid a finger underneath the partially-sealed back and tore it open, the bright cover of the card coming as a surprise when he saw it. There were balloons, there was a cartoon cake, there were words of birthday wishes, things that a normal parent would give their child as a birthday present, and at the sight Yarne looked over to his mother, who nodded. "Keep going, there's more to this than a sweet cover," she assured him, still smiling. "I hope that it makes up for how late this has been."

Seeing as she hadn't even bothered verbally wishing him a happy birthday up to this point, Yarne was happy to take it for what it was, and if he could have left it there he certainly would have. But with watching eyes he knew he couldn't, and so the card came out of the envelope and he held it tightly, reading the cover aloud as he'd always been expected to do with these sorts of gifts. "'Dear son, may your birthday this year be as bright and fun as you,' that's really nice, thank you," he said, feeling anxious about opening the card with so many pairs of eyes focused on him. Seemingly sensing his anxiety, Kjelle put a hand on his shoulder before leaning against him, a non-verbal reminder that she was right there in case anything went too horribly.

With a slightly-shaking hand, he opened the card to reveal a smaller, white envelope on the inside, as well as an unmarked gift card for a local store. He set those aside for the moment, to reveal the rest of the words in the card. "'Here's to another great year,' that's what the card itself says, then…" He trailed off as he read through the handwritten message also in the card, making sure it wasn't something terribly personal that his mother had scrawled underneath the printed note. "Oh, Mom, thank you for this. 'Let this year be the most blessed one you have lived yet,' that's such a positive thing to tell me." That was picking and choosing what to read out loud, and Yarne knew Panne was aware of it; he'd completely skipped over the part where she'd referred to him as her son growing into his worth, which he knew was meant to make him feel bad about himself but he wasn't going to give her the power. "I will do my best to make this a good year, I really will."

"There's…not a whole lot of money on that thing," Ricken said, pointing toward the gift card, "but there's enough to have a good shopping trip with it. Your mother and I weren't actually sure what else you'd want outside of what you already got, so we figured that would be the best way to handle it."

Yarne nodded, flipping the card over to see that it didn't have how much there was written on the backside either. "Just don't go into the store expecting to spend a lot and you'll be pleasantly surprised with how much we gave you," Panne added, before shaking her hand to try and move him off of the gift card and onto the other piece of the gift. "That isn't what's important here, though, so if you could please…"

Something deep down inside Yarne told him he didn't want to open that smaller envelope, no matter how much his mother seemed to be pushing him to. There were only so many things that it could be, and he'd already run through all of the possibilities in his mind the moment he'd seen it to begin with. It felt familiar to him, in a way that he wasn't thrilled with, and the pressure to open it and see what was inside was only reminding him of the last time he'd gotten an actual birthday card from his parents. That was the year he'd turned twelve, the last time he'd experienced the year of the rabbit, the year that his life had been completely turned on its head.

And yet, knowing that things felt the same, he could only hope that this time, they were different. There was the chance that the small envelope had tickets to something, a concert or a show or a trip that he couldn't afford on his own, but he knew that the likelihood of this being an actual gift for him was slim to none. Still, he grabbed the envelope, and under the eyes of everyone else in the room he opened it just like he had the card, feeling the glossy paper on the inside with his fingertip before pulling it out.

Suddenly he felt like he'd just turned twelve again, looking at a chain of black, white, and gray pictures that he couldn't wrap his head around. This time, though, he didn't need someone to explain what they were to him, and he let them fall to the table, his fingers unable to hold onto them any longer. "You…you're…really? You're joking, you…can't be. You're too old for that."

"Perhaps I am a bit older than recommended, but there is something that needs to be done and if you won't step up to do it, I have to find another way to make it happen." Her lips pursing together as she stared down her son, Panne seemed rather intense until she noticed that he was beginning to sniffle and tear up. "Oh, what's wrong? Are you upset that I still think you're too hopeless to do what's been asked of you?"

Her use of that one particular word stung, but Yarne was already too wrapped up in his emotions to let it bother him. "No, it's not that, not exactly. This is just…I already have one little sister, I didn't think I'd…you know. Have someone else to think of me as their cool older brother."

That caught Ribbon's attention, and she lunged across the table to grab the chain of paper that had gotten her brother so upset. "Hold on, what's he talking about?" she asked, bringing the grainy photos close to her face to look at them, before glancing over them at her parents. "What do these have to do with him being someone else's older brother? Is this more adult talk I don't want to be listening to?"

Yarne reached up and rubbed at the corners of his eyes, trying to keep himself from crying too much more than he already had. "You mean she didn't know? She lives with you guys and you didn't even tell her?"

"Because we knew she'd tell you if she had the chance, and we wanted this to be a surprise for you both at the same time." While it was clear that Panne was perfectly at peace with what she'd just dropped on her children, Ricken didn't sound as sure about what he was saying, as if he'd been coerced into things without getting much of a say in the matter. "This was not a decision we made without serious thought, I hope you both know."

"I still don't know what you're all talking about," Ribbon reminded them, throwing what she was holding over at her brother, who didn't even flinch when they hit the table next to him. "So, if someone could be really nice and tell me what—"

Three voices all responded at the same time, as well as one blubber that wasn't much of a statement so much as it was Yarne finding it impossible to properly form the words needed. All of their messages were worded differently, but got the same message across; while the person least affected by what was being said sounded almost in disbelief at what she was repeating, the other two sounded a lot more firm in their answer, and after they finished speaking they all froze in place, looking at each other like they thought everyone else was wasting their breath. That didn't stop Ribbon from falling back into her chair, which toppled backward and hit the wall behind her with a thud, overdramatic in her reaction. "Don't break their chair over this," Panne scolded, as she leaned back in her own chair. "It isn't that big of a deal."

"Mom, are you kidding me? This is the biggest deal of all big deals in the world!" After scrambling to get her chair back on all fours, Ribbon jumped up and ran around to where her parents were sitting, draping herself over both of them as best as she could. "I never thought I was gonna get the chance to be a big sister! All my friends are going to be shocked when they hear about this!"

While she was taking the news well, Yarne was still emotionally compromised by the whole thing, finding himself leaning more into Kjelle for support while he worked through the tears and frustration he didn't know how to express. He'd already been through this song and dance the last time it was the year of the rabbit, and now his much-older parents were putting him through it again? He struggled enough to be a good brother to Ribbon, despite their twelve-year age gap, and now he was going to have to be an even better brother to a baby he was twenty-four years older than?

"Perhaps if you hadn't always been so hopeless in life, none of this would have happened," he heard his mom dryly say from where she was sitting, as if she needed to add more fuel to his emotional fire. "After all, if we want the taguel tradition to live on, we have to make sure there are future generations to pass things down."

He began to shake, anger starting to bubble up inside of him, and there was nothing more that he wanted to do in that moment than get out of his seat and go teach his mother a lesson, but he knew he couldn't. There were a million reasons why that wasn't a viable option, and he had to sit there and take her reminders that he wasn't good enough for her until she got tired of antagonizing him and decided it was time to leave. At least his father had the decency to apologize to him for what had happened before they left, but as far as his mother cared, she had proven her point and gotten her way, one way or another.

"We should have seen that coming, honestly," he said long after the house had emptied out and he was left with the so-called birthday gift sitting on the table, the collection of pictures still there as if they were meant to be his. "Mom has to find ways to ruin everything, and this dinner wasn't going to be an exception."

"I'm still shocked that she did that as part of a present to you," Kjelle replied, sitting behind Yarne in another chair and playing with his long hair, running her fingers through it as a means to calm him down in private. "And the fact that this isn't even the first time she's done that, too. What a piece of work."

"Because the last thing her and Dad need in their lives is another kid to completely screw up with their parenting." He sighed, feeling Kjelle tug on a knot in his hair right as he began to slump forward. She apologized, and he continued on with his train of thought. "I thought it was bad enough when they did this to me before Ribbon was born, but another one? I get that the whole taguel thing means the world to Mom, but…"

Sighing as well, Kjelle pulled her hand away from Yarne's hair, only to use it to slam down on the table instead, startling him into jumping a little in his seat. "After what we've learned tonight, I'm not even shocked about that part. It's so obvious that she cares about this tradition a bit too much, seeing as she slipped us some apparent fertility wine without telling us, then…wait." That was when she grabbed the pictures and looked at them for herself, flinching at seeing the gray images but powering through looking at them until she found what she was looking for specifically. "When did she give us that basket?"

"Last month when we had dinner at their house, why?" To be fair, Yarne had seen what the pictures were and left it at that, he hadn't done any sort of further digging, so when Kjelle stood up behind him and dangled them back down in front of his face, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking at. "Yeah, I know, those are the pictures of the little…uh, I'd call them a baby, right?"

"Okay, clearly you're not used to being shown these and then asked if it's safe to be working out, should've seen that coming." Maneuvering the pictures so that one in particular was the one that Yarne was looking at, Kjelle carefully tapped at some marking on it with her thumb. "I don't know if this is standard for all of these—the kinds of scans I've been through aren't exactly for this purpose, after all—but they'll sometimes note information about the baby on them for one reason or another. Your mom might've known about this baby before she gave us that wine."

"Y-you can gather that from what it says there?" Yarne asked, squinting to read the writing that Kjelle was still point at. "It's just letters and numbers, I don't get it."

Even though he couldn't see her reaction, she was pushing her lips together into a deep grimace, followed by dropping the pictures and sitting back down. "I don't want to talk about this anymore," she said quietly, a solemn tone to her voice. "I hate that I know what that means, and I hate that I…"

She trailed off and he turned to see her beginning to get teary-eyed, which was an invitation for him to start crying once again. "Don't get upset, I can look it up or ask Mom to explain it, I guess," he said, trying not to sound like he was on the verge of breaking down for the second time that night over the whole thing. "I know this is a sensitive thing to have to talk about, I really do."

"Yeah, well, it's something that's getting talked about, whether I'd like it or not. I know that everything going forward's going to be about this, and I'm just going to have to swallow my feelings and deal with it." Her whole mouth was trembling, her hands fidgeting in front of her, and before Yarne could say anything else, she shook her head, stood up once more, and headed for their bedroom. "Just…leave me alone right now, please," she told him as she walked away, him initially moving to get to his feet but heeding her request and staying right where he was.

"This is all my fault," he whined once he heard the bedroom door close, falling forward until his face was close to his knees. "All of it, from the fact that Mom felt it necessary to have another kid to the fact that my girlfriend's completely heartbroken right now. Is there anything I'm able to do right, or am I really…am I…?" He couldn't say the word on the tip of his tongue, the word that had been used to degrade him for much of his life, but there was nothing that could better describe how he felt in that moment than hopeless.

All he could hope for was that the other ten months of the year of the rabbit would be gentler than the two he'd already experienced, but a nagging voice in his mind (that sounded suspiciously like his mother's) told him that things were only going to get worse. And really, he couldn't even find it within himself to question that idea.

Two days later, Yarne completely skipped out on picking Ribbon up from school, despite it being the one request his parents had made of him in the years since he'd left home. He couldn't bring himself to face either of them right then, and even though his decision directly impacted his sister more than anything else, he felt that he needed to put his mental state first in that moment. He'd been unable to talk about what he'd learned with anyone, knowing that it was still an incredibly sensitive topic to even imply around Kjelle, and he didn't want his first audience to be the very people that had caused the problem.

That meant that, after he'd gotten home that night, he had his phone on silent and was sitting playing his games without any idea of if someone was trying to contact him. He did check it every once in a while, just to make sure he wasn't missing anything important, but he wasn't planning on answering anything sent from his parents if they tried contacting him. There just weren't enough hours in a day for him to both relax for himself and deal with the chaos that they'd invited into their lives, and he was making the choice he felt was best for him in that moment. Eventually he knew he'd have to talk to them again, but that time wasn't right then and he wasn't going to let it be any sooner than he wanted.

His personal plans for the night ended up being derailed in a hurry, however, when he heard Kjelle coming home and there was a distinct second voice outside the front door when she unlocked it. To Yarne's shock and surprise, Lucina followed his girlfriend inside, giving him a small wave when she saw that he was sitting in his oversized chair, legs underneath him, playing one of his handheld games. "Why's she here?" he asked, not giving any chance for explanations to happen before he was demanding one. "It's Friday, you know how I prefer my Friday nights to go."

"Look, she's not going to be here long," Kjelle promised him, making sure Lucina was all the way inside before going through the door locking ritual to Yarne's liking. "We have something we need to deal with and then she'll be gone."

"Something to deal with? What, are you about to tell me that she's pregnant too, or?"

"I'm sorry, what?" The complete confusion in Lucina's voice showed that she had no idea what was being referred to, and when she looked between the couple her eyes were narrowed, like she was trying to make sense of what she'd just heard. "Is there something that you two need to tell me?"

Rolling her eyes, Kjelle waved a hand to show that Lucina had the wrong idea. "Honestly, that would make more sense than what the truth is, but he's talking about his mom. Swear on my life, it's bizarre and just doesn't seem possible, but he can tell you what happened the other night if you really want to hear it."

"Oh, that's…" Trailing off as she did a double-take at what she'd just heard, Lucina's eyes shot over to Yarne and where he was sitting. "Your mom? Really? Is it supposed to be a secret, was this intentional, do you even know those sorts of things? I couldn't imagine my parents deciding to have another child at their ages, this must have been a mistake or something, right?"

As much as Yarne didn't want to talk about it, he had someone to discuss it with that wasn't his parents and he could voice his feelings without offending them. So, while still playing his game, he explained, "No, Mom completely intended for this to happen. It's the year of the rabbit, it's something about how taguel culture works, she's lost her mind but it's what she's wanted and we can't really argue with that."

"I'm going to guess you're not really happy about this, hm?"

"I don't know how to feel, honestly. It's still a lot to think about." He wasn't looking up from his game, he didn't want to know what kind of expression Lucina was wearing while talking about this. "I'm sure I'll sort my thoughts out as the months go on, but right now I just…wish they hadn't handled it the way they did."

Squirming as she stood in between the halves of the room, Kjelle watched as Lucina kept staring Yarne down, finally getting annoyed enough with it to state, "Hey, the night's not going to last forever. Can we get this done so we can get on with our lives?"

"Right, sorry, I'm just curious about all of this. It's so strange to think that an adult friend of mine is going to be having another sibling in their life." Lucina shook her head and went to follow Kjelle to the kitchen table, while Yarne completely tuned whatever it was the two of them were doing out and focused wholly on his game.

It was only when the game needed to charge and he could no longer stay in his chair to continue playing that he got up, finding that the women weren't where he'd last known them to be. It was beginning to grow dark at that point, and he wasn't sure where to go looking for them, but he was sure that if Kjelle needed him for something, she would have sent him a message to tell him. That was when his phone still being on silent dawned on him, and he scrambled to first go charge his game before checking for any missed texts or calls from his girlfriend, finding only one: a short I'll be back soon message that had been sent over an hour before.

That sent up immediate warnings in Yarne's mind, because he hadn't known she was leaving in the first place, and now that he did know she was gone, it was long past "soon" and he needed to be worried about where she was and if she'd be returning in one piece. As if it would do anything if something were actually wrong, he replied to the message to ask her where she was and if she was okay, and then turned his phone's volume on and waited for any response. There were so many possible things that could have happened that he could have stressed himself out going over them, but for every minute that passed after he'd sent the message, he came up with at least ten new possibilities for what had happened.

No response ever came, but it was just a handful of minutes later that the front door unlocked and Kjelle was back inside the house, her light hair dampened by what looked like snowflakes. "Sorry about being gone so long, I didn't think it would start snowing on me on my way back," she apologized, kicking the door closed because her arms were filled with a paper bag, its handle clearly broken. "I had to take Lucina home, then I stopped to get dinner, and then the snow was falling and I thought I was going to wreck another car in the snow this year."

"A…car?" Yarne repeated, something just surprising enough to hear that he almost was able to forget about the fact that the door hadn't been relocked. He still went and took care of that while Kjelle got the broken bag over to the table, tracking snow through the house with her shoes still on her feet until her hands were freed once again. "You can't just tell me about a car and not explain, you know."

"I'm not really sure what else you need to know, Lucina didn't need her car anymore and she traded it over to me in exchange for the wrecked one, since she has her actual one back and her father gave her this one to keep for whatever reason." Shrugging, Kjelle started getting her shoes off by the door, while Yarne pressed his face against the window to look outside and see the new vehicle out front. Kjelle wasn't lying, she really did have the red car from when they'd all gotten together sitting outside, in the space that her wrecked car had occupied up until the day before (that he hadn't ever gotten an explanation for the disappearance of, although now it made sense). "She said she'd get someone to fix it or she'd sell it for parts, but she wasn't losing any money on the trade so she didn't really care."

"So that's why she was over here, I take it?" he asked, coming away from the window just to rush back as he realized how much snow had already collected, despite it having been clear if not frosty outside when he'd come home from work earlier. "Gods, of all the nights for you to get a new car, huh?"

"That's exactly what I was saying after getting dinner, I was praying the whole way home that I wasn't going to get hit again. Made it in one piece, thank everything, but it wasn't a fun ride. That car isn't the best for driving in snow, but it sure feels nice to be behind the wheel of it." There was a hint of joy to Kjelle's voice as she spoke, telling Yarne that she had found fun in getting to drive her new car that he hadn't even expected her to get anytime soon. He must have made a noise without realizing it, because once she wasn't wearing her jacket or shoes any longer she came over to him at the window, pressing up next to him while trying to avoid touching the frigid glass. "For once, something worked out in my favor without me trying to make it happen. Sure, it snowed and tried to ruin it right away, but it didn't, and that's good."

"It's a real blessing," he replied, thinking about how many layers of blessings the fact that they'd gotten a car like that contained. There weren't going to be payments on a new vehicle, there weren't going to be too many costs related to fixing up the old car beyond what had already been paid, it was like the whole problem had caused itself to vanish. "You think it might have happened because of what year it is?"

"Come on, we're not playing that game," she said, stepping back to head toward the table and the food waiting for them. "I know it's the big thing your mom believes, and I respect that, but I don't think that the year has any impact on what kinds of things happen in our lives. It's just time, time doesn't affect what happens to us like that."

That sounded reasonable enough, and with one last look toward their new car, Yarne also stepped away from the window and followed Kjelle and the scent of the food at the table. "I mean, I get that, but maybe there's something to it. Maybe this year just really is good to taguel and since there's so few of us left, most people can't prove its effect on life."

"Great idea, except I'm not a taguel. There's no reason that I should be getting your luck."

As they were sitting down in their normal chairs, he looked at her and tilted his head, trying to come up with any other reason why the blessings he was supposed to receive that year would be shared with her. The obvious reason was that she'd been the one to light their candles back on the first day of the year of the rabbit, and that could have granted her some of the blessings, but that felt like it was a bit too obvious. There was also the possibility that because she was with him, she had the same energy and the same blessings that he was meant to have, but that didn't feel right either. It definitely wasn't that she was mistaken for being a taguel by some deity out there—she was small, light-skinned, and blonde, while he and his taguel family were much darker in complexion, and even Ribbon was close to Kjelle's height despite being half her age, and even though both Yarne and his sister had a reddish tint to their hair, they still very much had locks with a deep brown tone like their mother.

Finally, after coming to no conclusion that felt right, he shrugged about it. "I'm just saying, maybe there's something to it that goes beyond just normal luck. I think it's probably because of the year, and I'm sticking to that."

"You know, if it wasn't for the fact that I'd wrecked the original car this year, and hurt my knee this year, and even got cut by that blade at work this year, maybe I would believe you just a little. But I don't, and that's fine." She was reaching into the bag, getting out the different containers that they were meant to eat out of, talking while she got things ready as he watched. "I think this is just something nice happening to me for a change. Nothing more, nothing less, and I'm not going to question it."

Yarne didn't want to leave things as they were right there, but he knew that when Kjelle spoke like that, talking about not questioning things, she wasn't inviting him to continue the discussion. It was her way of firmly putting her foot down about how she felt, and he had to respect her boundary, much like she would one of his. "Okay, but, did you decide to pick up dinner because you didn't have to pay for the car?" he asked, the scent of the food starting to get a bit too tempting to ignore any longer. "Because this isn't something we usually do, and with how much you've been trying to save up because of that car to begin with…"

"Lucina actually suggested getting it on the way home, snow or no snow, because she'd gone over for lunch and, well, this was the daily special." Kjelle motioned toward everything she'd set out on the table, which was a fair amount of food for the two of them. "She didn't get this, obviously, not enough meat for her to take home with her, but she knows how you feel about your veggies. Thought it would be something you'd like."

He could already imagine the taste of the different vegetables in their sauce, and it was hard for Yarne to stay present in the conversation when he wanted to dig right into what he'd been served. "I'll have to thank her for this next time I see her. What a good friend."

For a moment, Kjelle seemed to have something to say on that note, but she either never had anything at all, or she chose to say something different. "She's definitely the kind of person I'm glad I got to know, even though it took until after she was an adult for me to finally start respecting her. Something, something, realizing my parents didn't get to shape my opinion on her, something like that."

"I can't even imagine why they'd make you think anything bad about her," he said, beginning to twitch slightly as he was restraining himself from getting food while they were still having pleasant conversation. She noticed his odd behavior and told him it was fine to start eating, and he moved so fast that she hadn't even finished the sentence before he had food in his mouth, chowing down happily.

"This was a good idea," she mumbled to herself as she started picking at the food she wanted to eat for herself. "A really good one, at that." She did notice Yarne overhearing her and looking at her with a confused glance, but she shook her head at him. "Don't worry about it, everything's fine. Just…eat, will you?"

As much as he wanted to press further, he knew that she wasn't going to open up about what had her so quiet. Some things were better left untouched, and while the things on his girlfriend's mind were one of them, the food she'd brought home definitely wasn't, and with the snow falling outside Yarne never quite felt happier to have a restaurant-quality meal in the safety and comfort of his own home. It was the same style of food that he grew up on, and even with his difficult family history, he could at least be thankful that he was able to keep eating the foods that had made him happiest, with better company this time around.

There was a knock at the front door one morning, not long after Yarne had woken up to the sound of his alarm faintly ringing on his phone next to his side of the bed. He was laying there, just waiting for a reason to get up and get his day started, another week having passed him by like he was living the same day every time. He'd skipped out on picking Ribbon up from school again, he hadn't even tried talking to his parents beyond letting them know he wasn't getting her for them, and he was spending just about all of his time not working there at home, doing the same things he'd always done. That knock gave him the reason to get out of bed, gave him a reason to put real clothes on, and gave him a reason to go see who was there at the door.

Standing on the other side, looking annoyed at being outside in the morning cold, was a pair of long, dark pigtails that made his whole body freeze to see. He was home alone, and while he didn't know where Kjelle was specifically he was sure she was probably at work either working or just there to be at the gym, he knew that if she'd invited this person over, she would have told him. Still, it wasn't right to just leave her out in the cold like that, so he carefully unlocked the door and opened it a crack. "Uh, h-hey, Severa, what are you doing here?" he asked, watching as she began to glare at him through the little opening he'd provided. "Kjelle's not here, if she's who you're looking for."

"Ugh, that would've been nice to know before I came over here," Severa replied, rolling her eyes dramatically before putting a hand on the door and pushing it toward Yarne. "Let me in, I'm here and I'm not going home right now."

"I…don't want to let you in?" he said, confused at why she thought she had the right to push her way into someone else's house. "You don't have to go home, but you're not coming in here without someone else here too. I know how…mean you can get."

She retracted her arm and gasped, her mouth opened as wide as she possibly could make it. "Excuse me, that's no way to speak to me! Let me in right now, or I'm calling Kjelle and making her make you let me inside!" While that was quite the threat, he knew that it wouldn't result in anything meaningful because Kjelle would be more than happy to know he was standing his ground with her.

But, he realized soon enough that the cold he was letting inside the house was bitter, and Severa was actively standing out in it, so he caved and stepped back from the door so that she could come inside. By the time the door was locked back up, her teeth had begun chattering and she was doing her best to rub her hands together to warm them up. "Why did you come here, of all places? I get not wanting to go home, but there has to have been somewhere better for you to go." Yarne was trying to make sense of what was going on, about why there was some woman that wasn't family or his girlfriend currently in his house. "Don't you have close friends you could spend time with? Like, uh, what's-her-name from the party?"

"Beruka's out of town for the weekend, taking a 'spiritual getaway' which really means just going out and getting into barfights in unfamiliar cities for the rush of it," Severa explained, sounding slightly annoyed that she hadn't been invited along. "Inigo and Cynthia are busy this weekend too, and you're stupid if you thought I was going to pick crashing with Owain or any of the others over coming here."

"Because you like us better than the rest of them?" Their history wasn't exactly the greatest, as Severa had occasionally tormented Yarne when they were in school just because she always ended up sitting behind him in classes and wasn't ever able to see things. There was also the aspect that he was just tall, lonely, and awkward, while she wanted to be the bully that everyone adored, something that had caused tensions between herself and Kjelle here and there. The fact that Severa had actively chosen to come see them instead of the people she claimed to actually get along with just felt weird, yet when she nodded in response to Yarne's question he felt like he could believe it. "That's unexpected. Well, make yourself comfortable I guess, I don't know when Kjelle will be back but—"

"Look, I'm not even worried about her not being here. Let me have a seat, I'll just be waiting around until everything blows over back home so I can sneak back in, grab my stuff, and get out of there without being noticed." With that, Severa walked right over to Yarne's big chair and flopped down in it, sighing in relief as she sunk down into the cushions. "It's hard being the problem child, isn't it?"

He flinched at the blunt wording of the question, but knew he should have expected it given the fact that her parents often spent time with his parents, and therefore would have reasonably had many discussions on that very point. "I mean, the fact that I'm the problem child is why I don't live with them any longer," he said, coming closer to the chair before deciding to sit on the floor in front of it, facing Severa so that they could talk with ease. "But, uh, I also have a sister to be compared to. You don't even have someone else that can be the 'good' kid for your parents."

"Thanks for that reminder, really appreciate it." Severa's eye and nose twitched as she took a moment to keep herself from lashing out at what she'd just brought upon herself. "My point is that we both understand what it's like to be the one to blame for everything going wrong, whether we're really responsible or not."

"I mean, my parents don't usually blame me for things going wrong, it's more of a blaming me for things not being perfect." Yarne was aware that he had quirks that weren't what his parents—especially his mother—wanted from him, but they'd never framed them as being what made him a problem. It had always been his inability to do things to impossibly high standards and being hesitant to do things outside of his comfort zone that had caused the majority of the issues he had with them. "I know it's different for you, though. They still think you're to blame for everything, don't they?"

Severa grabbed one of her pigtails and began playing with it, running her fingers up and down through the long locks. "I so much as take a step too heavy in one direction and my mom's going ballistic over me ruining her day. That's how bad it is being there, Yarne, and I just…I couldn't take it any longer this morning. Gods forbid that my alarm goes off a bit too loud when I want to get up, it becomes a full blown screaming match that my dad's getting angry at, and then he gets mad at me and goes off on me too. I had to get out, and when I go back I'm not planning on staying any longer. I'm done with them. Done."

"Where are you going to go after you get your stuff, then?" He was beginning to sit up taller, realizing that there was a chance he was about to be faced with a question he didn't want to have to answer. He wasn't the biggest fan of spending time with Severa as it was, but there was no way at all that he could allow her to stay there at the house while she found her footing somewhere else. "It's not like you have any other family to crash with, right?"

The way that Severa's grip on her own hair visibly tightened showed him that she wasn't quite ready to unleash her master plan, but she spoke again after a few moments of silence between them. "Beruka's been helping me with finding somewhere to stay until either all of this blows over, or she can get out of her lease and room with me. Obviously hoping for the second option, but right now I don't know where I'll be going, with her being out of town and all. Can't even use her couch as a landing place."

"I'm sure we have other friends that might be able to help," he pointed out, not knowing who else exactly there was that Severa hadn't previously burned bridges with. "If it comes down to it, I bet you could ask Cynthia for some help. Her parents are pretty—"

"Her mom's best friends with my mom, dumbass." The venom in Severa's voice was unnecessary, but she was agitated and she'd just heard something that she felt was stupid, and because of that Yarne couldn't fault her for the way she snapped. "I'm not asking them for help, just to find out that I'm the new topic of discussion in their friend group. It's not worth it."

Yarne nodded, accepting that he didn't have any good ideas that wouldn't have some reason for why they wouldn't work. "Well, that's all I've really got for you. Our space here is just too small, otherwise I bet me and Kjelle could let you stay here for a little while. Only other person I can think of would be Lucina, but I'm sure you've already tried reaching out to her."

"I haven't, but I'm not going to. Lucy's great, she really is, but I'm not looking for her to tell me all the things I've done wrong to put me at this point in my life. Once I get settled down somewhere, that's when I'll go to her looking for help or something." Severa switched which side of her hair she was holding, the side she'd let go of visibly mussed from how much she'd been moving her hands. "This is just stupid, honestly. I should've just run from this town the moment I had an excuse to do it, but no, I let my mom talk me into staying and now she's ruining my life."

"Your life's not getting ruined, you just have to take control of it from your mom and start making things all your own. That's something that I learned when I moved into this place, and I'm sure Kjelle would say the same thing if she were here." That was when Yarne felt his heart pang a little, because he was having to have this rather difficult discussion with someone without his girlfriend's voice being part of things. He glanced toward the door, as if she was about to walk in right then, but after seeing it still firmly closed and not hearing any car locks beeping, he slowly brought his gaze back to Severa. "Starting your own life kind of really sucks, but not being under your parents' thumbs makes it worth it, I think."

"Okay, but you had someone else to start things with. I'll be striking out on my own, relationship-wise, even if I have friends to help me out with things. Still not quite the same, no matter how you look at it." The vulnerability Severa was choosing to show right then was strange, but Yarne fully understood that in her weak moment, she just needed someone who would listen to her without judgment. He had to look past her being a long-time bully of his and give her the time she needed to process what she was going through, and if that meant letting her sit there in his chair venting all of her problems until she felt she could leave, then so be it.

When Kjelle came home a while later and the two hadn't moved from their spots, she was understandably confused about why a friend of hers was in her home uninvited, and even more confused about why her boyfriend was sitting on the floor instead of where he preferred to sit. "Did I miss something?" she asked after closing and locking the door, just to make sure she didn't create any issues by forgetting a crucial step. "Or maybe interrupt something, perhaps?"

"Whatever it looks like might be going on, it's not that," Yarne said, not having a single thing that it could have looked like in his mind but wanting to cover that base anyway. "Severa came over to…get away from family drama. The usual stuff that we understand."

There was a second where a shadow seemed to fall over Kjelle's face, but she moved right past it, coming to join the two by the chair by jumping up onto the arm of the chair like she would if it was Yarne sitting in it, taking Severa by surprise when she was half sitting on her. "You mean the kind of thing I've just spent all morning dealing with for myself? Totally understand it. Can't offer you a place to sleep tonight, but if you just want to hang out here all day, I'm fine with it."

"Thanks, but I'm probably going to head out soon, my stupid mother can't stay mad at me forever and I've got to get my things before she tries to lock me out of my room or something like that." Severa shuddered, before leaning back in the chair with a heavy sigh. "This is just dumb, the three of us being able to sit here and bond over bad parents. How could we get so unlucky to have this happen to all of us?"

Yarne's eyes widened at the idea that his bad relationship with his mother (and less so his father) was the result of any sort of luck, but before he could comment on that Kjelle was scoffing and shaking her head. "Luck's not anything to do with this, we've just got parents who shouldn't have been parents to begin with. Or, well, at least the two of us do, jury's still out on Yarne." She waved a hand in his direction, and hearing that take made him relax a little. "Seriously though, if you go get your stuff and come back here, I'm not going to tell you to leave. You're welcome to this space as long as it's not overnight."

"I'm not going to intrude too long, I've already been here a while and I'm sure I've gotten on all of Yarne's nerves sitting here taking up his time." With a wink, Severa sat back up and carefully maneuvered herself as to not knock Kjelle off of the arm of the chair while standing to head for the door. "It's been nice to be able to vent to someone about things, though, and if I get the itch to do it again I'll be right back here. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like one to me," Yarne replied, not wanting to make it too obvious that he wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of his calm weekend day being spent dealing with family drama that wasn't his own. He stood up as well, doing what Severa didn't and sending Kjelle falling from where she was perched, only instead of causing her to fall to the floor he knocked her into the seat of the chair with a soft thud. After making sure he hadn't just broken his girlfriend on accident, he went to the door and locked it behind Severa after she left, the reminder that she was welcome back shared yet again before she was on her way outside and hopefully back to her parents' house to collect her things.

"I'm surprised you didn't tell me she was here," Kjelle remarked, still awkwardly positioned in the chair so that her face was against the seat and her legs were closer to where her head should have been. As she adjusted herself to sitting properly, she kept talking while Yarne paced around, thinking of how he was supposed to explain why that was. "I mean, I wouldn't have known it anyway until I was on my way back, I didn't take my phone in with me and I wish I had. Oh, I wish I had."

He felt a sense of relief knowing that she wasn't upset that she hadn't gotten the warning about their unexpected guest, but now there were new questions being raised. "Why were you with your parents today?" he asked, coming to stand behind the chair to look down at her with a concerned expression on his usually-worried face. "I thought you might've been at work, or just over there to use the gym equipment, but being with your parents? Did something happen?"

"You could…say something happened, yeah."

"I'm afraid I don't understand." Yarne's face showed more concern than he really felt, but he didn't know how else to get the fact that he was curious across. "If something didn't happen, then it didn't happen."

"Something did happen, though, and it's the strangest thing. It's nothing bad, it's just…definitely one of those things that you look at and go, yep, this happened and there's nothing I can do about it." She smiled in his direction, noticing how concerned he seemed and reacting to it with lowering her eyes a little. "Just trust me when I say that it wasn't anything bad. It was just the…"

"Strangest thing," he finished, knowing that she was just going to talk in circles until he gave up on getting answers. "Kjelle, I don't need to know specifics about what happened while you were there, if it's going to bother you that much to talk about it, but I do want to know if everything's okay. Can you tell me that?"

Her smile fading at once, she was no longer looking up at him and instead had completely tucked her chin down toward her chest, so that her face wasn't visible from Yarne's current vantage point. "Sometimes I like to forget that my parents aren't just overgrown teenagers and they're actually, you know, older people now. So when I get called to come help them with something they've been doing all my life, it's just weird. Then I get roped into just talking to them for hours and when I get out and come home, everything going on here was going on. It's been a dumb day already and I'm kind of over it."

"Good news, we don't have to do anything else today if you don't want to," he told her, climbing over the back of the chair and sliding down next to her, so that he was half on the arm of the chair and half resting on her, until she moved over enough to give him more space to squeeze into. Yarne looked over at her now that he could see her face again and saw that her eyes were zoning out, focusing on something that wasn't really existing. "Hey, it's okay, whatever happened wasn't bad, you already said that, so it's all good, isn't it?"

Her head shook very slightly, but her gaze held on the same point that it had been the whole time, unmoving even though everything around it was in motion. "If I'd been better about reaching out to them, this wouldn't have happened," she muttered to herself, almost like she was mentally working through something related to her morning's adventures. "I would've known there was a problem, I would've known to talk them out of things, I would've been able to keep them from this."

"Uh, what are you talking about?"

At once, she snapped back into reality, forcing a laugh as she faced her boyfriend with a completely false smile. "It's nothing, everything's fine, my parents will survive. They always have, after all, so this isn't going to be anything different."

"You're not making any sense." Yarne was overly familiar with breaking down over things going wrong and needing to talk through what was bothering him, but he didn't know if Kjelle was even aware that she was going through the same exact problem. "Can you tell me what happened to make you go over there? You still don't have to tell me what happened while you were there, just what happened to make it happen."

Her eyes crinkled closed as she made her smile bigger, faker, all the more venomous. "They needed help with part of the house remodel and decided to call on me instead of someone who actually works with that sort of thing. Figured someone strong could be better than someone skilled," she said, her tone making it clear that she wasn't wanting to say much more, but she'd said enough for Yarne to not need further elaboration. Based on everything he'd just heard, he could assume that one (or both) of her parents weren't able to be working on their long-running remodel of their home and their physical vulnerabilities had deeply upset their daughter, especially when that was how she'd found out about it.

Before Yarne had the chance to word that in a way to let her know he'd pieced things together, Kjelle seemed to come to her senses, her face reverting to its normal expression instead of the smug one she'd been wearing seconds before. "I just told you way too much about what's going on, don't tell anyone that you know what I know. They don't want anyone thinking they've gotten weak, I'm sure you understand."

"My lips are sealed," he assured her, despite not knowing a single person that he would want to talk to about that sort of thing. "I'm glad you were able to trust me with this information, even though it was bothering you."

"You're starting to sound like a therapist."

"With how much time I've spent talking to them, I'm taking that as a compliment." He winked at that, Kjelle leaning over into him as her way of showing her enjoyment with his rebuttal, and they decided without any further discussion to leave things exactly as they were. The day was still young, even if everything and everyone in it wasn't, and they had all the time they wanted to relax together, de-stress from their normal lives, and enjoy each other's company. Even with the idea of someone coming back for a second round of venting, they knew they needed to make the most of what they had.

Things could change on a moment's notice, and nothing was guaranteed to be the same the next time they had time like this to share.

A/N: and now we've entered the even more dramatic and fun part of the story! the following chapters are a lot of medical drama, a lot of family drama, and a lot of my favorite tropes in writing. :D