[LN] The Princess returns in glory - or at least with enthusiasm

[animalhats]

She'd been home.

Molly had been home, she knew that much, but for almost no time at all - enough to wake up from her nap and recognize that she was in the Leapfrog, Victor and Chase arguing about something up front and Karolina laughing at them. It was a little stuffy and the seat vibrated a little and there was that slight tug at her stomach as they Leapfrogged homewards--

And then she was at the North Pole, dumped unceremoniously onto a pile of teddy bears, to the surprise of one of the Yetis. She blinked at him for a moment, then scrambled out of the pile and took off running. The elves that saw her immediately started trying to follow her, excited to have their fellow toy-tester back, and it was that... rather unique tableau that she presented to anyone who happened to be watching as she raced upstairs looking for people she recognized.

"NICOOOOOOO!"

Comments

[animalhats]

Molly wouldn't really bat much of an eyelash at that statment, honestly, if it wasn't for six words: Majesdanian chick and her Skrull girlfriend. Sure, it could be different people.

But it probably wasn't, and even if she'd been thinking of that, Molly would still have assumed--

"That's Karolina and Xavin!" she yelps. "They made you attack Karolina and Xavin?!"

She's not mad or upset at him, for what it's worth - just startled, and mad at the government. Just goes to show you can't trust grown-ups, clearly. But that's a nuance that Kon probably won't pick up on.

[matchmadeinhell]

It was always like the inexorable pull of gravity, the way he was reminded that he'd hurt people - good people. It wasn't that he wasn't aware of it or that he didn't care. He cared. He'd always cared. That was part of how they'd messed him up so badly.

He'd cared enough to try to botch as many jobs as he could, which was the reason Karolina Dean had survived the encounter at all.

But a lot of his natural empathy was still repressed like crazy just so he could get through the day. His past actions had to be looked at through a veil of "thing happened, person survived said thing." Seeing people as individual people, seeing them as fragile, breakable things that bled and hurt and had connections to people, was something he as trying to coax into coming back very slooowly.

Because having all that empathy come back at once would probably kill him.

"They were your friends, weren't they." He briefly closed his eyes. "Molly Hayes. Nico Minoru. Still MIA - Dean and the Skrull - Xavin - were on your team and were the only ones back. The Pride's kids. You were mentioned in the briefing. I read your files."

He'd tried to kill her friend. Okay, so technically he'd tried not to kill her friend, tried to botch the fight so she could get away but it'd been so unbalanced and a few shots meant to go wild hadn't gone as wild as he'd hoped, and she'd been hurt pretty badly. Probably not enough to be killed but...badly. At least until the Skrull showed up (thank God).

When he opened his eyes again, they were wide and horrified as his brain made the connections again, snap snap. Empathy, how he used to feel it. The Majesdanian being a person less in the vague "I tried to make it so she got away, she didn't deserve to die" kind of way and more in the "I bruised and bloodied her before managing to avoid snapping her neck, she didn't deserve any of that, I am the world's worst human being" kind of way.

He'd tried (not?) to kill the friend of this tiny little girl who'd hugged him because he was sad. Who wore little animal hats and chirp chirp chirped away like Lian Harper. It was her friend - the only family she had left from the way the briefing had made it sound.

He started to float away from her, expression horrified.

"I - I -"

[animalhats]

"They had files on us?" Molly asked immediately, because that's clearly the important takeaway from this conversation. "Woah."

But then Kon was pulling away, and she decided to focus on the good part - which Kon probably wasn't. "But she's alive, right? Karolina's tough and you said Xavin rescued her!"

[matchmadeinhell]

"Yeah, she was. She got her out before she was hurt too bad. Probably."

It was the probably that caused the glass inside his head to shatter.

"I'm gonna - I'm - I'm - I'm -"

He was not a stutterer, not usually, but his brain seemed to be trying to rewind. Maybe it was skipping, trying to go back to a time before all this, but scratching away, never really able to turn back the clock.

His face was oddly blank as he said, "I'm gonna go. Your friend's probably around. The yetis can help you find her if you need it."

He was already floating away as he said it. He felt the crash coming, a sucking void in his chest trying to drag in his heart. It was probably not going to be a good thing for a little kid to see, especially after he'd just admitted beating up her friend.

[animalhats]

"Kon?" He started flying off and she ran over to the railing, trying to follow him. "Kon, it's okay! I'm not mad!"

Because clearly that was the problem.

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon briefly looked back at her, eyes looking just a little bit wilder.

"I know," he said gently. "I'm just a little mad at myself right now."

And with that, he turned and flew off, diving down through the center hub that passed through every level, down towards the bottom level where the gym was, before she could see him crumble.