westwhere | i've spent all of the love i've saved { open }

[She looks up Allison with pure puppy eyes. Kamala needs the validation. It's hard not to feel like a complete screwup the moment her friends and family aren't there to hold her hand.] Really? I know I don't... [She waves a hand helplessly.] Think about stuff. Everyone complains about it back home. I don't focus. My head is always in the clouds. Maybe I can't make anything work without them.

Hey, no. There's nothing wrong with trying to have ... hope. Even here.

[She knows it can feel hopeless at times, but she doesn't want Kamala to turn into Allison.]

And you are so capable. Don't think that just because your ideas are outside the box that they're bad. Sometimes the world needs a little outside the box.

[Kamala is blissfully quiet for a change. She hangs onto every word for dear life. It's tempting to believe she did this to herself. It's hard to accept at age sixteen that things happen much less that it isn't a result of every criticism she's ever received.] Yeah... thanks. I really needed to hear that.

[She wipes her face with her free hand.] I'm sorry you can't be with your family. I mean besides Five who is probably off doing something really weird right now.

He's Five. He's perpetually off doing something weird.

[Then again, that could probably be true to most Hargreeves.]

He hasn't been too terrible to you, has he?

[Kamala nods, eyes going wide as she recalls every weird thing she's witnessed from him. It's all extremely mild compared to what the others have seen, of course. She shakes her head at the follow up.] Not really. He's kind of a hater about my powers but, in that weird way I think is his way of caring? I'm trying to be cool about it.

[She snorts.]

I think criticism is definitely one of Five's love languages.

[The other is breaking the world for you. She thinks about all the times that he's shown up, desperate to save them, and she can't say she blames him for behaving the way he does some times.]

But we didn't exactly have love modeled to us in great ways growing up.

Edited 2022-12-31 03:27 (UTC)

[Kamala's face falls at that. She kind of suspected on some level. Five is daydrinking. Diego, who she completely adored, did have a pack of wolves following him everywhere. It paints a picture.] I never asked about your parents.

[She feels a tad guilty about that now. She should be less self-involved probably.] I'm sorry they weren't the best modelers. Ammi and I have had our ups and downs, but it's only because she was scared for me. Not a lot of opportunities on my world for people with their heads in the clouds.

[She shrugs. It's one of those things they worked out together recently. Kamala has let go of the mistakes they both made along the way to a healthier relationship.] I wish I could share them with you... or at least Five. He wouldn't be the first white boy my family adopted. Just saying.

[She laughs a bit, because the idea at Five being adopted at fifty-plus just because he looks like a teenager is an amusing one.]

That's sweet, but I think Five's a little old to be getting adopted.

[That being said.]

My dad wasn't very hands-on. Mostly trained us with our powers, and then left the rest to Mom. Mom did her best, but she was a robot, so some things got lost in translation.

[She tips her to the side at Allison's first point. That's fair. Her parents adopted Bruno very early on. Whatever follow up she had planned dies quickly. Kamala's mouth goes wide as she asks the first thing that comes to mind.] Your mom was a robot?! Seriously?!

[Kamala quickly reigns it in. Her mother would kill her. Time to walk back that rudeness.] Sorry, I'm being rude. It's just that robots can't have kids on my world; at least not human kids. Ultron made tons of robot duplicates of himself to murder all those people with. Your mom wasn't an evil that needed to be stopped for the sake of humankind obviously.

Well. Not my mom.

[The Sparrows Grace, who they treated like garbage? She might have started feeding her children to a paradox looking to consume the world, but that's neither here nor there.]

But it's not like it was a common thing. Dad wasn't married and he thought we needed a ... maternal touch.

[Kamala nods, immediately thinking of Bruno. (And herself. She's trying really hard to suppress the thought.)] It is hard living without a mom. [Bruno has hers, of course. It isn't the same and Kamala knows it.]

I'm glad your dad thought of it even if that opens this up for a million more super rude questions. I feel like an Illuminauntie for even thinking about them.

[She laughs, before shaking her head.]

It's okay, you can ask. He probably deserves the super rude questions.

[Kamala winces.] Okay, but this might be rude to you too so please stop me if it is. Are you, Five, and Diego half-robot? Is that like a thing where you come from? Are you guys just adopted and raised by a super cool robot mom?

[She laughs, because of the things she could have asked, that is not what she was expecting.]

We are not half robot. But ... we might not be human.

[She still doesn't have a clear answer on that, but she can at least clear that much up.]

On October 1, 1989, a bunch of women all over the world suddenly got pregnant and had a baby all within the span of a couple hours. Each of those children that were born wound up with powers. Somehow, my father figured that out in advance and adopted seven of them within a few months of their birth. And when he realized that children in fact weren't robots and wouldn't just blindly follow orders, he built us a robot mom to help manage us.

[So that is the weird story of the Umbrella Academy. But Five looks like Five is a much longer story.]

[Kamala's brows scrunch together as she tries to imagine all this. It's crazy and horrifying on so many levels. She feels terrible for the women this happened to. It raises a lot of questions about Five's deal since he looks around her age. Of course Allison herself. What are her powers??

In the end, all Kamala can vocalize is this:] That's... really messed up. I want to say sorry except I'd be really sad if you, Five, and Diego never existed so I guess it all kind of worked out? Hope your moms are okay. Human and robot included.

[That sounds so traumatic for them.]

[She doesn't really want to talk about either of her moms at the moment, so she just nods.]

Yeah. Me too.

[She never knew her birth mother, but she didn't deserve to go out like that.]

But it all worked out. Even if my dad was garbage, I got my siblings out of it. And ninety-five percent of the time, I wouldn't trade them for the world. All six of those idiots.

[Kamala nods along. She gets that sentiment... you know minus the bad parents. The Khans are angels. The rest she overreacts to in classic Kamala fashion.] Whoa! There's six of you?! You have a big family! What are the others like? Can I ask? Because I really want to.

[Actually, she would love to talk about (most) of her family.]

Well, first is Luther. He's a literal giant with super strength. He's also the sweetest of us, and he just got married actually, while I was home. Which was great, because he always was a big romantic.

[She pauses there because she misses Luther and honestly wishes he was here. Also, he was dead last she checked, but she doesn't want to talk about that.]

And number two is Diego, who you've met. I'm Number Three. And then there's Klaus, who is ... honestly a hot mess ninety percent of the time. But he also brings along a lot of much needed perspective. He gets our flaws, and is willing to forgive us our mistakes which ... honestly we need.

[Kamala is totally engrossed in these descriptions. She's already mentally planning out cute little doodles of each one with the exception of Diego. He of course is already in her sketchbook. She chuckles at Klaus.]

Aww Klaus reminds me of my brother Aamir before he met his awesome wife Tyesha! Totally had a goth phase and everything. He's pretty steady these days; just really religious. It's cool since he's not rude or pushy about it.

[It's actually nice to talk about him. Kamala realizes as soon as she shares that she doesn't talk about her family in detail enough. It's all passing mentions.]

Religious and Klaus is not really a thing ... but he did start a cult once.

[But one of the better cults? Possibly because the cult leader had no grand ambitions and promised the end of the world wasn't going to be for another fifty years. But that's neither here nor there.]

Anyway, Klaus can see ghosts. You know Five. Number Six was Ben and he was probably the best of us. Still an asshole in his own way but he was kind of the glue that held us all together. His power was basically a tentacle monster in the body of a teenage boy. It was a really messy ability and could be kind of dangerous.

[She sobers slightly, because Ben is always hard to talk about. Their first real experience with loss.]

He died when we were kids. But he and Klaus were best friends so I think in their own way, they stayed together. It also explains some of Klaus' hot-messness.

Yikes. [Really how else can Kamala react to a cult being formed by someone's brother??? The rest stops the commentary cold for longer than usual with the teen. It's hard not to empathize with someone who carried a horrific ability that eventually killed them.

She quickly gets back to pointing out how wild this all is once she realizes Ben didn't pass on.] Wow so he was still hanging out with your dead brother? That's actually kind of sad for both of them.

A little, yeah. But I think in some ways he kept Klaus more stable than he would have been, and I don't think Ben was ready to move on.

[And he saved Viktor in Dallas. She doesn't know if she, Klaus, and Diego would have been able to get it done.]

And then that leaves Viktor. His powers are sound-based, and he basically turns sound waves into force ... weapons?

[She's not really sure how to explain it, just that it's very dangerous.]

[Kamala's eyes go wide. That sounds so totally unique. Marvel, after all, does not have a Black Canary.] That sounds so incredibly cool and dangerous. Seriously I faced a sound weapon before. Do not recommend it!

[She laughs it off like this isn't a disturbing turn of events.]

Yeah, he ... had a rough go of it, I won't deny that. It's something he's still learning to manage. For a long time our father lied to him and told him he didn't have powers.

[And also drugged him so he couldn't use them. Allison leaves that out.]

He didn't take it well when he found out the truth.

[The smile fades instantly. That is horrifying. For all the fighting the Khans did when Kamala started keeping secrets surrounding hers? The idea of going that far is horrific.] Yeah, I bet.

[She swallows and speaks her mind cautiously.] Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm kind of glad you guys aren't around your dad anymore. I don't think I could see around someone like that and not say something.

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rumorate - 2023-03-31 01:55 (UTC) - Expand

i've spent all of the love i've saved { open }

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i cannot believe i lost this thread

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