While she can never be sure of it, there is always going to be a special one in her life that she cannot detach herself from. They brew her emotions into a lethal concoction so strong that even thinking of it sends her reeling, and as much as she tries to put reasonable names to it(Zhu, Tonka, Volterra, Amara, Cera), she’s always going to be wrong. Each of them bring something powerful forth, deep from the soul where it has lovingly grown them, constantly stubborn and ignorant of any logic, but they will always be only that.
She’s not going to admit it now, and there’s still a good chance that in the future she will do the same, but the one is Kid.
He feels like her our first born, a twin along Zhu that her womb didn’t carry but nonetheless breathing agony into her. She loves him now like she loved Zhu on the day that he first looked upon the world, cold, scared, shivering under the assault of his mother’s ferocity set on keeping him(and only him, he was all that ever mattered then) safe.
And having to see Kid in this state breaks another piece of her heart. Before long she’s going to have nothing left to break, having wasted it all on every poor soul that she lets herself become attached to blindly, but that again is another day. Sikeax still has a lot of it to destroy before she can be free of it entirely.
The look he wears rolls her chest cavity into knots. An invisible hand places itself around her windpipe to add that singular ache in her throat that comes from such sensations, holding back the effort to sweep him up in her arms and weep like a rainstorm, but Hobgoblin comes first right now.
Whether or not that is a bad mark on her mothering skills, she doesn’t care.
She gives him back the watered down version of her feelings. Her tired eyes work feverishly to gray, sunken in and laying low as the weight of her brows rolls in from above. Painted across her lips is a frown, equally weak. She can’t find the right words to say when he speaks of his mother, the connection he feels to her despite her treatment, the searching, all of it.
But maybe that’s how Zhu treated her, only in a different way.
“I don’t think that makes you mad.” The first of her words come out like evening winds, soft and tired, lazy as the day bares down upon them as the last of their energy flees. “Maybe you should try being who you want yourself to be, without her. If she’s gone, then let go. It’s for the best.”
Then why will you not let go of Zhu?
She hates herself for her hypocrisy, but hides it too well. No one needs to know except herself.
He rips the conversation out from underneath their feet, but before she can enjoy the comfort of talking about something else, he brings in the worst. That lump in her throat is growing tighter, pushing the life out of her until there is nothing left. Shame herds her eyes into looking another direction, downcast as the world slowly cuts away.
She pushes her fist down her own throat and grasps it, pulls hard as she can, and returns with said lump only to cast it into the sky, the only place she can’t get back to it.
“I left. It was for the better.” Cold, steely metal shaped into words that she can barely bring herself to make. She doesn’t want him to know only because she can’t imagine how he’ll look at her if he knew.
What she can’t keep herself away from is knowing how’ll take it.
She comes out of hiding to watch, eyes more awake than before but barely enough to make much of a difference. There is one other thing.
“Your father is there now, if you’d like to know where he’s at or maybe see him. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

OOC: sobs because you deserve so much better of post quality but i can't imagine making you sit any longer on this I'M SORRY

"Talk."