Boys workin' on empty
Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?
Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?
'Cub,' she says--
--and Koa shatters.
He lunges into her embrace, wrapping Anju in his arms with a ferocity to mirror the Captain's own. "Aunji-" Koa half sobs, half laughs, Pipsqueak squawking happy indignation as her tail is caught between the pair. The name is remnant of days long ago, a childish bastardization of Auntie Anju that Koa probably hasn't said in well over five years. Not since the last time they hugged like this, when he'd clung to her like a lifeboat in the bleak absence of his mom, the only time he'd truly allowed his broken heart to show.
And now? Now his world is ending again, and she is here, and he can't think of a single reason why he didn't go to her before. Tears sting underneath his tight closed lids, threatening to spill out, to pool into her hair. How could he have been so foolish? All these seasons he's been searching for the place he belongs, but it was always there.
He was just too damn frightened to find it.
"Auntie, I'm so sorry." He pulls away from her, then, his hands on her shoulders, his boyish face awash in guilt and pain and rivulets of tears. "I should've-- should've written, or come home, but I was gone so long and when I got back they told me you were on her cabinet and I was just so scared---" And he searches her, then, his copper eyes pleading, desperate for her confirmation that it isn't true. That she isn't lost, the way Everest supposedly has been. That she's his shelter in the storm.
--and Koa shatters.
He lunges into her embrace, wrapping Anju in his arms with a ferocity to mirror the Captain's own. "Aunji-" Koa half sobs, half laughs, Pipsqueak squawking happy indignation as her tail is caught between the pair. The name is remnant of days long ago, a childish bastardization of Auntie Anju that Koa probably hasn't said in well over five years. Not since the last time they hugged like this, when he'd clung to her like a lifeboat in the bleak absence of his mom, the only time he'd truly allowed his broken heart to show.
And now? Now his world is ending again, and she is here, and he can't think of a single reason why he didn't go to her before. Tears sting underneath his tight closed lids, threatening to spill out, to pool into her hair. How could he have been so foolish? All these seasons he's been searching for the place he belongs, but it was always there.
He was just too damn frightened to find it.
"Auntie, I'm so sorry." He pulls away from her, then, his hands on her shoulders, his boyish face awash in guilt and pain and rivulets of tears. "I should've-- should've written, or come home, but I was gone so long and when I got back they told me you were on her cabinet and I was just so scared---" And he searches her, then, his copper eyes pleading, desperate for her confirmation that it isn't true. That she isn't lost, the way Everest supposedly has been. That she's his shelter in the storm.
Koa Carpenter
I just think about my baby
I'm so full of love I could barely eat
I'm so full of love I could barely eat
