"Hey," Ananias quietly greeted upon approaching a solitary Kjelle sitting down with nothing but her lunch to keep her company. He indicated towards a seat beside her. "May I have a seat?"

Kjelle stared at him questionably for a few seconds before giving Ananias a dejected shrug and playing around with her food a bit before saying, "Sure, knock yourself out." An awkward silence came between the two after that before Kjelle decided to try and break it. "So, what's the occasion?"

"What do you mean?" Ananias asked without even turning to her.

Kjelle took a bite out of her lunch and swallowed it before answering, "I mean, you're not the type to take the initiative, right? So what exactly's got you doing it now?"

Ananias simply shrugged. "I take the initiative whenever I need to." He turned to her. "You were looking a little bit lonely, so I thought I'd try and see if I could give you some company." He rubbed the back of his neck. "T-That is… if you don't mind."

Kjelle looked at Ananias for a moment before letting out a small chuckle and giving him a small smile. "Yeah, I guess I don't." Ananias gave Kjelle and small and awkward smile back before making himself comfortable as Kjelle went back to eating her lunch. The two of them remained silent the entire time it took Kjelle to finish it, but once she did, she set her eating utensils down, wiped her face with her napkin, and looked at Ananias expectantly for a while before asking, "Well, aren't you going to ask me why I was looking so lonely?"

Ananias hesitated for a moment before blushing a bit out of embarrassment and answering, "I figured that if you wanted my help with that, you'd tell me the reason to that yourself."

Kjelle heaved out a weary sigh. "Of course," she muttered.

"… We really are incompatible, aren't we?"

Kjelle nodded. "Like night and day."

"Which really makes me wonder why you considered us friends in the first place," Ananias stated. "Because… well… I mean… you just seem like the type of person who likes to do her own thing, you know?"

Kjelle was silent for a moment before asking, "Do I…," she bowed her head sheepishly, "do I really come off as that type of person?"

Ananias thought about the most appropriate response for the situation before nodding his head slowly and answering, "Yeah, kind of." Once he noticed that his response had saddened her somewhat, he gently added, "It's just, training, that's all I ever saw you do or talk about. You never really played with the rest of us that much. You were always so focused on strength and combat. And you were so good at it too. It was hard for the rest of us to really connect with you like we did with everyone else."

Kjelle nodded her head understandingly. "Yes, I suppose you're right." She smiled sadly as she cupped her own hands onto her lap. "My mother was just so strong. My father too. I admired them so much for it. Their strength and their discipline to get even stronger." She shook her head. "I wanted them to be proud of me, so I tried to learn as much about combat as quickly as I could from them, but no matter how many times I practiced, no matter how much of it I put into getting everything right, it never seemed to be enough. It always just seemed to miss the mark. So I kept on training. I trained until I could finally and truly earn their respect and adulation… but I guess that came at the expense of truly becoming friends with everyone else, didn't it?"

Ananias nodded his head and gave Kjelle a sympathetic look. "Yeah, I guess you can say that."

Kjelle furrowed her brow as she hung her head. "I figured as much." She shook her head. "All those years… in a way, I sort of wasted them all."

Ananias averted his eyes to the side. "If it means anything to you," he began, "I don't think that they were as much of a waste as you think they were."

Kjelle raised her head and cocked an eyebrow at the red-headed trickster. "Huh?"

Ananias shrugged. "You're the strongest woman I know," he stated simply. "Doesn't really happen overnight, you know?"

Kjelle chuckled and gave Ananias a small, appreciative smile. "No, I guess not."

Ananias gave her a small smile back. "And besides," Ananias continued, "if anyone here has been wasting years of their lives, it's probably going to be me."

Kjelle raised an eyebrow in surprise. "And why would you say that?" she asked.

Ananias blushed as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and once again averted his eyes to the side. "Looking back, I honestly should've accepted the fact that I was nothing like my mom, or any other woman in my family for that matter. But I didn't. I kept practicing my lock picking, my salesmanship, everything, just to prove that I belonged into the family that I had somehow gotten myself born into. But no matter how many times I practiced, no matter what I did, I couldn't match up to any of the other Annas my age, or younger even. But I was stubborn. I was stubborn for a long time, until finally, it dawned on me that I should just accept it and move on with the rest of my life somehow." He shook his head regrettably. "I wasted so many years of my life trying to be something I wasn't. And now I've reduced myself to just helping everyone else around me as best I can. What a way to live, huh?"

Kjelle took a moment to process everything that she had just heard for a moment before quietly answering, "Yeah." The two of them stared off into the distance for a long time before Kjelle quietly muttered, "We really are completely hopeless."

Ananias nodded. "Yeah." He then turned to her and asked, "You… want to be completely hopeless together then?" He nonchalantly shrugged. "Could be less lonely for the both of us."

Kjelle chuckled before saying, "I don't know. Hard for us to be there for one another when I'm always training."

Ananias chuckled. "Same." He then frowned and quickly clarified, "Except replace training with doing favors for everyone."

Kjelle playfully smirked. "Didn't you say that you were over trying to be like the rest of your family?"

Ananias gave her an acknowledging nod. "Yeah, I did."

"Then why exactly are you still so bent on making everyone satisfied and happy then?"

Ananias shrugged. "I could ask you the same thing."

Kjelle gave him a playful shove. "Let's just say that old habits die hard and leave it at that."

Ananias smiled. "I can live with that."


Author's Note: Welp, here it is. Support A. Now onto Support S. I've really got my work cut out for me, don't I?