#You love that poor girl. Either confess or I will resort to SHENANIGANS.

[grey-eyed-menace]

With hope so fragile, so quiet and scared, that it's already long shattered. The pieces digging into her soft heart like fiberglass, hurting, aching, Uri doesn't want to take his hand.

She doesn't, but his hand is still held out, and his smile is so heartbreakingly gentle, so sincere, that Urisha can't help but grab onto it, with both of her hands, and squeeze, stumbling forward with wide eyes.

And, for the first time that she can really remember, someone catches her, pressing her close to their chest, arms wound tight, as though afraid she'd disappear, lips against her temple, and they whisper comfort into her ear with little hesitation.

Uri buries her nose in the crook of his neck, shoulders shaking as the first sob begins to make it's way out of her throat. Ugly and sharp, it's more a wail than anything else, but still... It's hers.

It's the first moment of the rest of her life, a new beginning, but, for the first hour or so, it feels so unbelievably unbearable that all Uri can bring herself to do is cry.

Hope has never felt so unimaginably painful before, and, she wonders, quietly, if this means she was ever really meant for it.

If it meant something as flawed and ugly as her deserved to exist, if something as beautiful as even hope could scare her into submission.

[Uri remembers the first, and only, time she went to her mother for anything resembling comfort, she remembers the pain it brought, the despair, the fear.

She remembers the burn of alcohol on the woman's breath, the dig of her nails, the venom in her voice. Uri remembers it as the only time the woman called her anything other than 'Girl' or 'Darling Urisha'.

She remembers the tears, hot and ugly that pricked her eyes after everything was said, after everything Alara told her, after being told she was nothing.

...Uri doesn't have many more memories of her mother after that incident, she doesn't think she'd want more if she's honest.]

(Uri loved Azazel as a child, so frighteningly innocent in her admiration and want to remain by his side.

Azazel had treated her more like a particularly amusing puppy, she realized now, and when she stopped amusing him he threw her to the side, uninterested in playing the father figure to a little girl who's only real achievement was being able to jury-rig rudimentary spells.)

{Uri thinks she might have been some sort of suicidal the first time she tried to kill Vali, tried to strangle him because he had made one too many tactless comments about how her sister put up more of a fight than she probably ever had.

She remembers tackling him to the ground, she remembers screaming and kicking, biting and scratching.

She remembers being thrown into the adjacent wall hard enough to leave an indent, she remembers diving for his throat not long after.

More than anything, Uri remembers that Vali's the only person who's never called her anything other than Uri, she also knows she's probably one of the only people who's wanted his head on a silver platter for anything other his title as Albion's champion.

Uri thinks she would have hated him for the simple fact that his mother loved him.}

"You can stay here for as long as you want," Nero offers, softly, fingers running through her hair with obvious affection, "for as long as you need, you don't have to hide, we won't hurt you."

Uri can only latch on tighter, bury herself deeper in his embrace as he quietly mumbles soothing words, sobs still wracking her small frame.

It doesn't escape her that he hasn't offered her a place in his Peerage, he's offering her genuine protection, an official education, something...

Maybe a family?

She... doesn't know how that works. Family. Not really.

Alara was a shit mother, always more obsessed with her status as the mother of the bastard Mammon, the useless little girl who hadn't brought her the protection and riches that her visions that said she would. The useless drunk of a Seer who hit and verbally tore apart little girls whenever she didn't get something she wanted.

Evectus was completely absent, wholed up in some mansion in the Underworld swearing beyond all reason that she deserved to have her head mounted on a pike for simply being born to a woman who was crazy enough to fuck him.

Azazel was interested in playing the role of a father for all of seven months before he found her rivalry, (Vali's childish want), with his actual investment more amusing. His words always lilted towards his own benefit, treating her more like a brainless puppy than someone with an actual self-worth beyond 'Please Love Me!' and all the bullshit that entailed.

Vali wanted just as many things from her as others, but his were always more personal, more hard-headed, less obvious, Vali wanted such childish things from her, such childish little things that... Uri sometimes, could entertain the idea of looking up to him as an older brother. Could sometimes allow herself to indulge in those childish wants when they still just... wants of a child, the bone crushing hugs, the assurance that someone cared about him beyond his status as a Longinus user, sleeping with someone who wouldn't leave as soon as morning came, who wouldn't use him for Albion.

[Uri could never quite bring herself to believe in things about people loving her beyond what she could bring to the table, could never quite find it in herself to look Vali in eye after one to many truths had been revealed.]

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And this is where I ran out of ideas!