#causing him to be malnourished and struggling to function well

[nrd-answers]

Lungs do all the fleshy bits mean you have to eat food now?

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[seroothincs]

Well now I gotta see your Louie headcanons

Awh, yes the sweet baby boy. He's honestly such a favorite of mine, he's just soo.. Mmm Baby. An Absolute dork who tries to put on his best tough face but ends up being more cuter. I don't have that many headcanons of him since we already know a lot about him as a character, he has a lot of voice lines and is therefore the most involved mafia member in the show. Rather than Legs or even Johnny, but Johnny never says anything so it's obvious why we don't know a lot bout him. Headcanons: Now he's the bit more timid and friendly mobster in comparison from examples like Legs or Johnny, of course he isn't afraid to kill someone that gets into his way but he certainly is the more chatty type of guy you'd meet in college. Of course he's all around the place and eager to follow out Tony's every order, he isn't shown to be bothered when needing to kill someone. Though he does show concern for other people's well being like when he called out Homer's reckless use of a gun in "The Cartridge family", saying that homer could have seriously injured someone. Another example is in the famous scene from "Insane Clown poppy" where Johnny got shot. Paints him as a more sensitive mobster, which is what makes him all the more cuter.

He's usually shown to be the shortest member of the gang, shorter than both Legs and Tony. Johnny as well but I'm not so sure about Frankie in comparison with him. Maybe they're the same height, maybe Frankie is taller maybe Louie is. Anyways, there could be a reason for that, maybe a history of shortness in his family -- or maybe not. OR MAYBE it has to do with his past. Look he's a pretty thin and short dude, has a bit of belly chub but that's normal for a dude like him in an old age. He was extremely thin since his childhood, likely because he was raised by a single mother and back then they struggled to maintain a proper income to care for themselves. Causing for him to grow up a bit malnourished, which both caused his baby face, his short height and why he looked so thin. So you could imagine the confusion and worry when Legs and Tony grew more and more while Louie only grew half of their previous heights as teens.

Possibly and this is just one of my many filled in plot points regarding his backstory. When he was a young adult, so say early 20s, He got his first and only real job, after Anna Maria's death and after he quit college, in an Equestrian facility.

He had been spiraling into a deep depression after the terrible news of Anna's passing, so much so that he didn't see a point in continuing his studies to become a chef and gave up on his dream. Instead he wanted to try a new thing and that was caring for animals, he thought if he was under the presence of them he could feel more at ease and escape from the busy life he had once lived.

The job, working as a cleaner, paid enough of a salary to live off it, though he still was miserable. Tony eventually found him and it took some convincing to do once he got him to join the mafia again.

I should probably mention at this point that Anna Maria (Fat tony's deceased wife if anyone isn't familiar with her) and Louie were really tight best friends in the younger years. They have been ever since their teenage years and even went to college together, I don't wanna get into this too much as I will write a separate post to how the young mafia only consisting of three rose up out of Springfield's slumps into the most feared organization that ever appeared in the country.

This guy will search for anything to function as a lighter for his cigarette. Doesn't matter if it's a grill, gas stove or even a iron. He sort of got an addiction back in his early 20s and now he's trying his best to cut back.

He had much, much, much, much more curlier and luscious hair when he was young. He kind of misses it but that's just what happens with old age, he's also kind of glad that he doesn't have to deal with the thickness of it anymore. So many combs broke when he just wanted to brush through it, so many.

It's no surprise horses are his favorite animals, it's weird for a boy to like them but he got the love for them from his father. His dad was a jockey back in Italy and before he died he had promised Louie he would take him with him one day to the ranch where he used to work at and train at. This promise obviously fell through and Louie only remembered that place after he quit college.

Frankie and Louie are sharing one single braincell and it's almost dead.

Louie and Tommy "The face-shooter" are really close and I think that's because Tommy is just like Louie, both were and are young when they joined. (but I think it's also because Louie is no longer the youngest in the whole mafia and relieved that a 19 year old joined)

Louie and Michael are good friends for two reasons. One: They both are excellent cooks and occasionally when they meet up they cook together. Two: Both are children.

Louie, as mentioned in earlier episodes, is a good dancer. He was shown to be good at tap-dancing in "Mayored to the Mob" so I feel like he had dance class as an after school activity. Yeah sure the others laughed at him because of it but he really liked going to that place, wasn't a big fan of the ballet they did but he loved tap-dancing, he still does it to this day.

Besides his love for dancing, he also has a love for instruments. He has been seen attending the Rolling stones Rock N' Roll Fantasy camp and later in the episode he even dragged Tony and Legs along with him to the concert. A total Stones fanboy. But this makes me think that he started playing guitar when he was a young teen, his idols being Keith Richards and Brian May.

He is, so god damn accident-prone it's not even funny. He has been already through so many tragedies in his life and he continues to be put under them. He always manages to get shot in some way shape or form during gang wars, trips when there's nothing even there for him to trip over, fell out of a three story building that one time and he has so many scars on his bodies to show where he was stabbed. I don't even know how he continues to live after so many things happened to him, guess he and Frankie are really immortal.

What was that? You said your favorite band are the Rolling stones? Bad move, buddy. Now you're caught by an ecstatic Louie. He is such a huge fanboy for the stones and once you mention even the slightest of references at the band he turns into a blabber-mouth. It's cute at times, though his music choice sometimes gets in the way of Legs's when they are driving in the car and want to put on some music. (His favorite album of course is Sticky fingers)

Louie plus Frankie and all of the kids from their mobster colleagues (Including Michael) are loyal fans for the Muppet Show and watch it all the time when they're together. Oh and they of course watch Itchy & Scratchy together.

He loves tiramisu over everything, it's the one dessert he always orders at La Coffee nostra. He also a sweet tooth, both Legs and Tony tell him to cut back since Louie has been through so many dentist's already, so many holes.

He doesn't like to admit it at times but he's forced to when Legs gets on his back. He can be disorganized and messy, his apartment looks like a war zone and I don't think anyone would want to step in his bedroom if they already saw the state of his living room.

And that was it for the headcanons, I at least Think these are all of them. I can never make enough because of the cute boy.

[bokettochild]

Legend malnutrition theory you say? 👀 👀

Indeedy I do!

Okay, so, at this point I think everyone knows, but for clarity I'm going to cover it anyways.

Early on, during his first adventure, our lovely veteran rescued the Princess from a cell where the villain had locked her away so he could sacrifice her in a ritual later. Link (Legend) came in through the sewers and snuck her out, but unfortunately Aganim (the villain) got wind of it, and sent the castle guards after him, telling them that he had kidnapped the Princess of Hyrule. Before you know it, Legend's face was plastered on every wanted poster throughout Hyrule and any time he entered a town there were guards and villagers chasing after him to capture him and hand him over to Aganim.

Naturally, Legend is a smart cookie and put two and two together and learned to avoid towns. Unfortunately, towns are where all the food is, and if he can't go near communities without being seen, he can't get at food without being chased away.

To make it worse; as a child, roughly between eight and twelve years of age, it's not likely Legend would have known much about wilderness survival. He was a farmer kid like Twilight, he was raised learning how to care for plants and animals, not how to make sure he wasn't poisoning himself. So it would follow that when he was stranded, unable to contact society for help (save a precious few people who weren't trying to get him killed) then he would have had multiple incidents with trying to eat things that were actually Really Bad for him. This would of course result in a lot of wariness about food, which would only be made worse if anyone else offered him things to eat, only for things to be poisoned or drugged in order to help capture him.

Combine wariness of food with the inability to find safe food, and you get a kid who's essentially getting starved out there while trying to save the kingdom.

Now of course, as Legend got older, he learned more about survival and how to find things that were safe to eat.

His timeline is called the Downfall Timeline for a reason though. His world wouldn't be as lush and prosperous as the worlds before him, and finding nutritious food that was safe to eat would have been quite the problem when traveling through the desert, up mountains, and through the dark-world. Add in that he ended up traveling to foreign countries A LOT; places that wouldn't have the same plants and dangers, but new ones and sometimes worse ones, and the problem just makes itself worse.

As a result, I'm pretty sure Legend has some sort of eating problems, definitely some food anxiety, likely a lot of mistrust about who he will take food from, and (perhaps most horrifying to the Chain) is in the same camp as Wild and Hyrule where he will eat almost anything, tree bark, bokoblin meat and dubious dishes included, because you have to do what you have to do to survive.

Now what are the results of all of this? Well! Ketto actually did some research for once and according to the Backpack Buddies Foundation (a foundation focused on helping abate child-hunger) people who deal with malnutrition have to struggle with increased anxiety and decreased immunity which heightens the chance of chronic diseases setting in.

Let's make that worse though:

"In children, starvation can cause even greater troubles. It is often accompanied by stunted growth and cognitive impairments. The issue of a weakened immune system is exacerbated at this age and hungry kids may experience long periods of illness. Children with nutritional deficiencies also appear to be prone to depression and subsequent unhealthy coping mechanisms, which might go as far as eating disorders, substance abuse, or self-harm."

So, in short, as a malnourished child, Legend is likely to struggle with depression, is at a high risk for any and all illnesses ever, is short, and likely has low muscle mass as well as some cognitive functioning problems.

(As a note, hoarding is recognized as a coping mechanism, just sayin)

So yeah, while we see no proof in canon that this is an issue, other than Legend's lack of height, we do see some of the results in the way he acts, and could see more in fics if we so chose >:)

(I've actually been trying to write a fic on this pretense, but life caught up to me and I haven't been able to get back to it for a couple of months)

So....yeah!

If y'all would like more theories from me, please just ask! I'm always happy to provide (and it takes minimal amounts of time, unlike fic writing and drawing)

[theladyskull]

Horizon original character

Faceclaim: unknown model

Name: Delya Griffin

Age: 24

Hair: light blonde, shoulder length

Eyes: blue

Height: 165 cm/5'4

Build: toned muscular

Family: Parents and a little sister named Elsa (deceased)

Alies: Aloy, Erend, King Avad. Neutral with all the other tribes.

Tribe: lived in the old world, slept for over 900 years, slightly part of the carja tribe.

Nickname: Due to her driven nature, she can come across as hot-tempered dealing with people who think she's just a small useless girl. Many of the Carja and Oseram men call her Spitfire and want to break her fiery soul.

History: Delya is a multifaceted woman, from having overtly physical hobbies like: rock-climbing, martial arts and interpretive dance to being an expert in computer programming, engineering and problem-solving. She is very goal oriented and is driven to get the job done. Hence why she got picked for the Horizon Zero Dawn project and didn't walk away from it. While she started in only the delta branch, she was quickly noticed by her peers and got transferred to the Alpha prime facility. There Elisabet Sobeck took her under her wing in secret for a special project. The Omega clearance was given to her, making a program undetected within Gaia that could give one person a cryo sleep pod far, far beneath the surface in case Gaia encountered programming issues.

Just before the failure of the sealed doors, Elisabet send Delya to the sleeping pod chamber through a hyper speed pod track deep underneath the ground, leading to the sleeping pod chamber. There under the guidance of Gaia's inner function named HYPNOS, entered the cryo sleep pod unaware of the events in the Gaia prime facility.

Plot points:

Wakes up after the events of Aloy purging HADES

HYPNOS signal leads Aloy and Erend to the sleeping pod chamber

The waking up procedure has some complications and she is brought to King Avads Castle for recovery under a lie.

Learns the truth about the Gaia prime facility, the other alphas, Gaia, hades and the machines.

Goes on a few adventures with Aloy while trying to adapt to this new world.

Goes on more adventures with Erend and grows closer to him.

Falls in love with him, but Erend being still infatuated with Aloy and him being oblivious, makes for awkward situations.

Erend finally notices her and has to fight with Aloy and other guards a group of mercenaries that are after Delya who doesn't know this.

While Delya is waiting for a kind of date with Erend but doesn't show up. (She waits all night till morning cause the other guards won't let her leave). In the morning she sneaks away, traveling to the place where they were working and gets ambushed.

Aloy, Erend and the other guards fight the mercenaries but can't prevent one from grabbing Delya and sliding a knife across her throat. They kill him immediately, but are to shocked to check if Delya is alive.

They leave the cave, Delya still alive, leaving through another exit and hearing that Erend doesn't care if she is alive or dead, unaware that he doesn't want the other guards to know, he's heart broken.

She travels back to Hypnos, heals herself and leaves for a journey beyond Carja territory.

During her journey, she loses her left arm and foot, gets rescued by a group that makes workable prosthetic's and teaches them a lot about the old world.

After 2 years she returns to Carja territory, saves Erend and a group of merchants of a crazed Thunderjaw by luck.

She continues her work, while Erend and her have this awkward tension that neither of them will acknowledge and rectify.

Delya's friends come to help her, including their leader who is a hulking dude who has his sets on Delya making his.

Delya rejects him, causing him to lash out and wound Delya in the process. Erend jumps in to her rescue but gets the full force of his attacks, causing him nearly to die, until Delya swings Erend's hammer against his face and he dies.

Delya brings Erend with much effort to Hypnos who heals him during the span of 3 days. After he is healed, he leaves without saying a word and doesn't visit or say anything to Delya.

After a ruse of hypnos, he returns thinking Delya want to kill herself and wants to stop her. He confesses he loves her, she confesses too and they make up.

Few months later Gaia is restored, Apollo is returned and all is well.

Possible plot points after this

A clan leader of the Oseram claims Delya as his wife, as she inadvertently promised herself to him while she traveled through the claim years ago.

Erend and Delya have been together for 2 years.

Both of them fight his claim but are unaware of each other desire to marry each other.

A hand to hand combat is proposed and even Delya is opposed to such a outdated concept, nothing can be stopped.

When Erend loses and Delya has to stop the fight in order to stop Erend from being killed, she accepts his claim.

When the topic of children comes up and she realizes she can't produce offspring, she tries to tell Erend before she can publicly tell everyone else, but fails after every turn.

At the wedding, she has to tell everyone that she is barren and is unable to have children. The clan leader refuses her as his wife, while Erend asks her to marry her.

They marry and Erend is convinced that Delya being unable to have children was a lie. After 2 months of being happy again, she reveals it wasn't a lie, crushing his heart.

Erend accepts a quest of King Avad that has him leave Carja territory for a long time without Delya knowing.

Before Erend leaves it takes a few weeks and within those weeks, Delya gets a big surprise when Gaia tells her she is pregnant. Delya tries multiple times to tell Erend this news but he is still mad at her, so cuts her off every chance she gets.

When Erend leaves and she finds out that she won't see him for a long time, she travels after him and catches their convoy just in time.

Even though he's ecstatic about the news, he still leaves with the convoy, promising he would be back before she gives birth.

This doesn't come to pass and after 1,5 years of Erend not being home, she fears the worst. Sadly the clan leader hears about her children (twins, a girl and a boy) and Erend not being there, he kidnaps the three of them and takes them to his clan.

Delya is poorly mistreated but does everything she can to give her kids everything they need which results in her getting malnourished and having to deal with beatings whenever her kids cry.

Eventually Erend returns months after Delya's disappearance and is horrified that no one knows where she is. With the help of Aloy who herself had just returned from a year old trip, it takes them back into the Claim and finding her with her children.

Just a glimpse of Erend and Aloy, she finds new strength within her and kills the clan leader with a knife straight to the heart when he tries to lay with her.

When Erend and Aloy barge into the clan leaders House, they are surprised to see her having killed the clan leader. Erend and Delya reunite, where Delya passes out in Erend's arms, totally exhausted.

Erend and Aloy bringing Delya and the kids back to Carja territory, to King Avad's castle in fear of retaliation of the clan.

The retaliation doesn't happen, instead an older clansman comes and thanks them, expressing regret of not helping Delya with her struggles.

Delya gets nursed back to health and reveals that their kids are named: Erso and Elsa, in memory of Erend's sister and her own.

[nautilusopus]

The Number I

Chapter 20: Vincent Damages Company Property

Sorry for holding this thing back for a couple weeks. We've finally reached a turning point and I had to make sure there were actually things happening in between the dramatic plot-twisty bits. Like plot to twist in the first place.

I had a bit of extra help in that regard -- apart from my usual crowd, I'd also like to thank @socialmimikyu and @terror-billie for helping me get my thoughts in order so the rest of the story past Chapter 21 won't be a disorganised mess. And thank you guys for commenting, because that does wonders for my motivation.

There are holes in the world, and spaces between numbers. Neither should exist. Cloud starts noticing them, and he isn’t the only one who has. And unfortunately for him, he’s both. (Contains graphic depictions of violence.)

The floor was immaculately clean these days.

There had been a time when it wasn't -- when it was covered in dust and dead insects from disuse. Stacks of paper from promising research projects that piled up in corners and on desks. Uniforms and equipment from new subjects. And, once upon a time, stones of all shapes and sizes and colours, and crumbs from home baked bread, and dirt tracked in by a boy that was small enough to squeeze into places he ought not to be.

All of it had been swept away long ago. The place had been cleaned and remodelled and sterilised, and not even rats would enter the mansion anymore, even long after it had been abandoned by the scientists. All that was left were the failed projects.

Something moved in the dark. There was a scraping, then a creaking of old, damp-riddled wood, and with a crash the lid of one of the coffins was knocked the floor and crashed against the Buster Sword lying on the ground next to it.

Vincent Valentine arose from the coffin. All this time he had listened. Heard the screams of defiance and anger, and then weeping, and the pleading to no one in the dark, and at long last the sound of resigned mantras, repeated one after another, and then of silence. He had listened, and he had done nothing. Until now.

Vincent had realised long ago that he could do nothing for them. It was yet another consequence of his failures. One by one, they were fed into the ravenous combine that was Shinra, and one by one they were used up and discarded. But the boy... the boy had been the first in years. The same child that had been so eager to feed himself into those whirring blades one day, and lo and behold, now he was here. Another testament to his cardinal sin.

And yet... there had been something strange about his eyes. He'd seen that look somewhere before. In fact, it had been one of the last things he'd seen before a bullet had ripped itself through his chest, tearing his old life away with it. The look those eyes had given him as he choked to death on his own blood had been full of many things, but one that they were utterly devoid of was regret. He had failed, and in the end, she had chosen this path. For better or for worse.

Lucrecia. The tissue grafts -- they were continuing her research posthumously.

This boy, the boy from the village that hadn't stopped bringing him rocks, that was now huddled in a dog crate and muttering nonsense to himself, that was half-mad already and twisted into a shell of whatever he used to be, was here because of him.

Vincent shut himself away after that, never to reemerge. There could be no atonement for this.

He would awake from time to time in response to noise -- always reminders of why he was here in the first place. Sobbing, rattling against the walls of the little metal box, incoherent rambling... he heard it less and less as time went on, until one day it ceased altogether, as did the visits to the storage room. Vincent hoped that by some miracle the boy had perhaps died in his sleep. He did not awaken for some time after that.

The sounds of a struggle dragged him back out of the deep slumber he had returned to. This was a larger group than he remembered.

"Hold its arms so I can get the legs in," said a voice. One of the lab assistants.

"I am holding. It can't move, I don't see what the big deal is."

"There's still the issue of involuntary muscle responses, and from this guy that could easily wind up taking your head off. So pay attention. I gotta get this all the way to the nerve."

A plaintive, muffled wail echoed through the room along with the voices of the lab assistants. He knew that voice. He doubt he'd be able to forget that voice. The boy was still alive?

"It's looking at me."

"No it's not, it just has its eyes open. Doesn't got any real brain function anymore. Just between you and me, this is why you don't stick a pressurised pump into someone's spinal column and fill it with mako, that's probably what did it. How can you be smart enough to grow a person in a vat and not know that?"

"The president gave him the grant money, man, I ain't gonna question it."

"Yeah, well, that's why we don't have grant money anymore, do we? Hurry up and finish the form so we can leave, it's freezing in here."

"Humanoid... purpose for archiving... organs?"

"Maybe education. It's not gonna make very interesting combat training exercise, and it's technically still alive. They'll probably want to keep it in one piece so they can figure out what not to do for the next time."

"Serial number... six seven dash two, Series three. Jenova Project."

"Project head?"

"Let's see... says here it's one of Crescent's, officially. Guess that explains why Hojo's so bummed out about the cancellation."

"Urgh. Freaks me the hell out. Her and the doc. Somethin' not right about her."

"Hey, you can't say it doesn't make sense though, right? Birds of a feather."

"Yeah, whatever." There was a loud click, followed by the sound of rushing fluid. "So... she's gotta sign off on it, right?"

"Yeah. She's in Midgar right now. The doc's planning on leaving too, so just give that form to him and he'll deliver it to her himself. Guess we're all out of a job now..."

"Yeah, guess so..."

Vincent barely heard the door close and lock behind him over the pounding of his own heart in his chest. Lucrecia was still alive. Head of the Science Department, from the sound of things. This boy -- Lucrecia had done this. To him. To both of them. And Hojo -- he was still involved in this as well? The first child, the one she'd had with Hojo, must not have made it to term. That must have been why the project was still running. The boy -- he was Series 3, it all made sense now. But Lucrecia couldn't have been his mother, could she? He had mentioned a mother quite frequently all those years ago. She did not seem like Lucrecia, and the boy looked nothing like her nor Hojo. This boy had simply been fallout.

It all made a sickening amount of sense. At least now he finally knew, so he could have some peace of mind.

But peace of mind did not return to Vincent. He waited days, and then what must have been weeks, and the men did not return for Series 3. They really were just leaving him here.

He was ill, it seemed. Severe mako poisoning, not to speak of whatever else had been done. If anyone would know how to treat this, surely it would be Lucrecia? She was in Midgar... still making choices like she had the first time he did nothing.

But Lucrecia was still alive. This boy was still alive. Surely something here could be salvaged out of this nightmare.

Vincent decided to leave his coffin.

His legs felt weak as he took his first step in what must have been at least ten years, but they held steadily enough, and he strode over to the wall and flipped the light switch.

The back of the room was lined with glass pods. Vincent did not want to think about what was in most of them, but resting in one of them, a light coat of dust covering the glass, was the boy.

It was a mistake to call him "the boy" now, he realised -- it was a much sharper face peering blankly back at him from inside the cylinder. But while his hair had grown out to his shoulders and solidified into a mat, he didn't seem to have much in the way of facial hair. Perhaps it was malnourishment? Every part of him looked chewed and diminished, and his skin was every bit as unhealthily pale as Vincent's.

He inspected the pod and found a small button in the side that seemed to open it. The fluid inside slowly drained, and Vincent watched impassively as the body inside slumped against the wall of the cylinder, being held up by the tubes coming from its mouth and nose. Vincent carefully disconnected them, and hesitated only briefly before removing the intravenous lines and the feed hooked into the back of his neck. If he had caused any damage removing them, it would be another thing that Lucrecia could fix.

The boy -- no, not a boy. And it wouldn't do to call him Series 3, either. He'd had a name that he said many years ago he would remember. Something to do with the sky. An old Nibeli one, translated into one succinct word for the sake of the Standard that everyone in Midgar spoke. Cloud. His name was Cloud.

Cloud's emaciated body fell to the floor. It appeared they had taken his clothes long ago, and he likely would not survive for long this far north, damp and naked. He pulled a couple of the Soldier First uniforms off one of the shelves and used one of them to pat him dry, then set about stuffing him into the second. It was far too big on him. Another pang went through Vincent at the thought, and he steeled himself against it. He must remain focused. It was unlikely he would have another opportunity for redemption.

The old wooden door had since been replaced with a steel one, requiring some sort of key combination to open. Vincent braced himself against the door and pushed, but it held firm. They had taken his gun from him long ago, and the two spells he had mastered during his time in the Turks worked strictly on people and not doors, and would be of no use here.

One of his sabatons clicked against something metal. The sword. His strength wasn't nearly that of a Soldier, but it was certainly much more than it should have been, and would do for his purposes.

He picked up the sword out from under the lid to his coffin and, with a loud grunt, rammed it into the door like a battering ram. It took another ten blows or so before the metal finally caved and the door opened outward, now crooked on its hinges. His arms ached, especially from disuse, but he held the sword steady and stood absolutely still, listening for the sound of boots on stone and cocking weapons. Someone must have heard that.

A minute passed, and no one came. Something stirred in one of the cylinders on the wall behind him. Vincent refused to look at it again, and dragged Cloud over to the door. Upon further reflection, he placed the sword on the magnetic harness Cloud was now sporting on the back of his uniform, then hefted them both onto his back. Until he could find a gun, it was better than nothing.

He had mastered some magic, but not much. He looked around the storage room for anything that might have been useful. Something was still shining in his coffin. The healing materia -- it was still there. Perhaps...? No, that wouldn't work. Mako poisoning, if that's what this was, was well beyond his capacity to heal with an unused materia. Still, he pocketed it anyway, just in case.

Starved as he was, Cloud was fairly light. It was just as well, since the sword weighed easily as much as he did, if not more. The mansion might be abandoned, but he was still stealing company property. Someone would notice eventually. He would have to move quickly.

Nibelheim was just as he remembered it. Perhaps his mother... no. If they had her child, Shinra would have tied up the loose ends involved. He himself had done as much during his employment. Besides, there was nothing she could have done for him. That's where Lucrecia would come in.

They both stood out rather badly, as he quickly found out. He gave Cloud an impromptu haircut with the Buster Sword's edge, and stuffed his own hair into the back of a coat he'd stolen from a guard station. Would anyone still recognise him? How long had it been since he had gone missing? Or the boy, for that matter? At least ten years, judging by how Cloud had matured. A lot could change in ten years.

The main problem was food. Cloud would not chew, and it took a fair amount of coaxing to get him to swallow. He'd managed to get him to swallow a bit of bread he'd already pre-chewed for him, but it came back up not long after: Cloud had apparently gone quite a while since eating any real food. He considered sneaking back into the mansion for a pack of glucose. He decided against it -- if they hadn't noticed Cloud was missing before, they certainly would now. He would have to figure something else out.

He wound up breaking into a clinic and stealing medical supplies when they reached the next town -- there was a military presence here too, if the massive remains of some sort of missile labelled Shinra Type 26 looming over the skyline was any indication. Vincent dimly recalled mention of a war with Wutai. Was it still ongoing? Was this meant to be used against them? He almost turned to ask Cloud before catching himself.

The expiration labels on the gelatin cups he'd purchased with the stolen money clued him in as to how long he'd been gone. Expires 09/58. Assuming these cups were new and would last about a year, he'd been gone nearly three decades.

The shock didn't really hit him. It didn't seem fully real. He supposed technically this was the "future". That explained how Lucrecia was in Midgar: it seemed they had finished building it. He wondered who was directing the Turks in his absence. Orwell, perhaps, or Avery. Assuming either one of them were still alive. It suddenly struck him that nearly everyone he knew could very well be dead. Thirty years was a lot of time for people to learn too much and become a liability, or for loyalties to waver too much for the company's comfort, or to simply catch a stray bullet at the wrong time. Nobody left the Turks except in a body bag. Or, in his case, a coffin. He was briefly amused by the mental picture of Avery covering up his death. She'd have addressed it to the wrong department, she always did...

He wondered if Cloud had any friends that were still alive. Had he actually joined the military, or had Shinra simply abducted him off the streets? He himself had taken part in such "scouting" expeditions at times, on the occasion when they couldn't simply find a poor, desperate family to volunteer. Eight to ten was the preferred age of most samples -- young enough to be impressionable, old enough to follow complicated orders. And small enough that no one cared when they went missing. The child mortality rate in the slums was quite high in his time. Nobody thought much of it if one or two children slipped through the cracks.

He never saw any of the samples again. Vincent had been a professional, though, and hadn't asked where they had gone. No Turk was stupid enough to want to know.

Next to him in the grass, Cloud made a noise of distress, his hands unconsciously groping for something. Vincent watched him for a few moments until he went limp again. He didn't seem to be responding to any stimulus that Vincent could see. His arm lay twisted at an uncomfortable-looking angle, displaying his serial number quite clearly.

Vincent carefully picked him up and moved Cloud's arm so he could more efficiently bandage it with some of the gauze he had taken from the clinic. One or two times, his hand would twitch, still grasping at nothing. Vincent ignored it. Cloud likely wasn't cognisant enough to feel pain or discomfort, let alone respond to stimuli. Any comforting he did would be lost on both of them.

He had grown quite a bit from the last time Vincent had seen him. It was difficult to tell what was him and what was Shinra's doing, though. He was still just as sickly-looking as he had been the first time they'd met. The strange bony physique he had was doubtless a product of whatever experiments they'd been running on him. His eyes were hollow now -- whatever had been there before, it was beyond Vincent's reach or help. Shinra had shaped his body, and the mako had claimed his mind, and Cloud himself seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in the middle of it all. He wondered who he could have been once, and how much of the boy he'd encountered in that crate steadily becoming more and more unhinged years ago was the person he was currently feeding gelatin and broth too. Not that it mattered much anymore.

Vincent wasn't sure if his own answers were any simpler. He was no longer a Turk -- Hojo had seen to that. Perhaps that just made him Vincent.

Who was Vincent? A dead man, he knew. A man that had failed Lucrecia. A man that wouldn’t fail a second time, though at what he wasn’t really sure. He could offer Lucrecia redemption, but only she could accept it and atone for them both.

Cloud had stopped swallowing, and Vincent didn’t have anymore success afterwards getting him to take more food. He couldn’t have possibly been full, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about that either. Another thing out of his hands.

He, Vincent, was still alive. And apparently Lucrecia had been as well. And so had Cloud. Perhaps it wasn’t so farfetched to assume someone else had returned from the grave.

A week later, and Cloud was still not taking solids. Vincent could not afford to break into a second clinic. It would give him away, if it hadn't already. He would need supplies. And money. He'd need employment on a very temporary basis, with someone that wouldn't ask too many questions -- it was highly unlikely that Shinra was looking for him specifically or expected his involvement in the first place, but he also couldn't risk leaving Cloud alone for too long. His pulse was weak and irregular, and his skin was clammy. His hands no longer twitched, reaching for something that wasn't there. He was practically dead already.

He would not have been the first, or second, or even third person Vincent had watched die. He likely would not survive long enough for Vincent to take him to Lucrecia, if she agreed to fix him at all. In the end, he'd be delivering him right back into Shinra's hands anyway. His eyes landed on the sword on Cloud's back.

It would be kinder, he knew. Whether or not Cloud was aware of it, he was still suffering. It was the principle of the thing. And it wasn't as though he would have much of a life to return to, should he recover. He would spend the rest of his days running. That was no way to live.

Vincent removed the sword from Cloud's back and levelled it at his neck. One cut. He wouldn't even feel the pain. No one recovered from mako poisoning this deep, and it was much better than letting him slowly starve to death or die of exposure. He would be free from Hojo, from Lucrecia, from Vincent's mistakes. Truly free, not out in the wild being hunted like an animal, a marked man for the rest of his life, even if they were to one day stop pursuing him. Vincent had often heard it said that one's face looked peaceful in death, but all anyone had looked like to him was a corpse. Cloud, with his eyes glazed and his face gaunt, was no exception. He sighed and adjusted the blade.

"Why can't I just pretend? Why do you care so much if I just pretend?"

The words came to him unbidden, and he frowned.

"Because it has never done anyone an ounce of good," said Vincent sharply. He realised he was talking aloud to no one. Another thing that wouldn't actually help. Cloud could not hear him.

"Why can't I just pretend?"

He still didn't know how old Cloud was. He could have been fourteen, or forty. His body was too warped, by chemicals and fear and time, for him to tell. Vincent knew he himself was fifty-seven or fifty-eight. He might not look it, after all these years, but he felt the age somewhere very deep. It had settled into him and wrapped itself around his bones, sinking into the fingers that held the sword above Cloud's neck.

Vincent put the sword back down. He was perfectly capable of pretending. He was going to pretend Cloud was awake right now.

"It gains us nothing. You being alive does not serve you any. Neither does my insistence upon talking to you. It's purely for my benefit, in order to come to terms with my thoughts."

Cloud said nothing, as expected.

He had skills he could use. A few mastered spells, though it was likely only fire would be useful to him here. He couldn’t take any jobs that wouldn’t be extremely temporary, both for Cloud’s sake and his own; the longer he was tied to an area, the sooner people would notice he was there. People were not yet asking questions about Vincent Valentine. He did not want them to start.

So, what sort of work was available for former Turks that had avoided the usual method of retirement? Most of them wound up as assassins, most likely. Or mercenaries. Once a Turk, always a Turk, he supposed.

He began picking up small jobs -- a day or two as a porter on the Corel river. That had been one of the first shocks of many -- Corel was gone. He’d expected an economic decline, of course. Coal couldn’t begin to compete with mako in price or efficiency. But Corel was gone. Turks gone. Wiped off the map by Soldier from the looks of things. The bustling little coal town he’d seen pictures of was forgotten and unspoken of.

Phones were portable now, he’d learned as well. He didn’t see much point -- any time one would be away from home long enough to necessitate a portable phone would be long enough for the battery inside it to die anyway.

President Shinra was still alive and still in power. That one was a bit of a surprise, if only because he’d expected the man to have a coronary long before now. Perhaps the science department had perfected biosynthetic organs by now. He drummed the metal fingers of his false hand against the floor of the boat he’d stowed away on -- perhaps they’d be able to grow him a new hand. He couldn’t quite recall how he’d lost it in the first place. He wasn’t sure if it would help if he did.

That was how he made ends meet from week to week: small jobs. He had to be in and out and gone in no longer than a week. Cloud began to put on a bit of weight, but he showed no signs of waking. Little by little, they made their way across the wilderness, and little by little Vincent saw things that were familiar, and things that were different, and things that perhaps had always been that way, but he had simply never bothered to look before.

Not for the first time, he wished he could ask Cloud. Perhaps he should have asked more questions when he had the chance. But then, he hadn’t wanted to know back then.

“If you felt like saying something, now would be an excellent opportunity to start,” said Vincent one day. He had propped Cloud up against a bundle of hay in the barn he’d snuck into. The birds -- chocobos, mostly, with a few aggressive swallows -- were watching them both warily.

“You must admit, there is a certain irony in risking one’s life for someone unable to appreciate the act nor the selfishness of the motivations behind it,” he added.

Cloud said nothing, as usual. Vincent sighed and sat down by the hay next to him.

“I did not care for your visits,” Vincent continued. “I do not felt they accomplished much.” He set about the task of removing his metal hand. Now that he intended to sleep -- truly sleep, not enter a state of prolonged hibernation, he’d found it was rather uncomfortable to have it on during the night.

He stared at the stump that remained of his forearm. He could dimly recall pain. That didn’t really surprise him. And a lot of yelling. And a piercing agony through his arm that seemed to be spreading, and then blissful oblivion.

“Although,” he added, “perhaps I am not without blame myself. If I had been more interest in dissuading you, we would not be here now.” He leaned back against the hay, feeling that strange heaviness building up in his bones again. “It seems my lacking skills as a conversationalist have caused more than a fair bit of misery.”

He looked at Cloud again. It was strange to see him so quiet now. Orwell had always been rather chatty in the beginning. After they'd had to dispose of Yang to prevent a security leak he went quiet. Everyone went quiet in the end.

“Of course,” said Vincent, “you cannot hear me now. This conversation between us is as pointless as the first thirty. You might not have listened then either, even when you could.”

One of the chocobos squawked at him, raising its head crest in warning. Vincent gave it a look.

“And so, here I am, a man that should be well into retirement, peddling my skills as a mercenary,” he said. “That is the hand fate has dealt me.”

He put Cloud to sleep with a quick spell. It was difficult to tell if he was actually resting. This was easier. Vincent wondered if he still dreamt.

He kicked a bit of dirt over their fire and watched it sputter out.

“We are simply what the world makes us, Cloud. No more, no less.”

Vincent limped his way up the staircase, the body draped over his shoulder unwieldy and making each step grind further into his knee. One of the MPs had managed to get the drop on him with a baton, and while it wasn’t broken, he could feel something grinding against something else that had no business grinding against anything in the first place. The gun he’d stolen was clutched tightly in his other hand. An assault rifle. Inelegant, but better than nothing.

There were more than a few bullets lodged in his abdomen by now. Vincent may have been a former Turk, but that was before thirty years of inactivity and the body he'd been carrying over his shoulders had dulled his skills and slowed his movements. He could heal, he knew, but he wasn't sure if there was a limit to it. He may have died before, but he was certainly alive now. Alive and mortal.

He heard the sound of a pistol firing, and Cloud let out a sharp gasp. He'd been hit. Vincent quickly ducked down a hallway by the staircase leading to the sixty-eighth floor.

It was just a graze, luckily. A gash on his leg that was already closing up right before his eyes. He tore off a bit of his cloak and quickly wrapped it anyway. There were already voices approaching them from down the hall, and he couldn’t afford to get distracted this close.

If he had been a bit less focused, perhaps he would have paid more mind to the fact that Cloud had made a noise at all.

Still, he paused outside the door of the stairwell, the ID card in his hand hovering by the reader uncertainly. There was a very good chance he wouldn't come back out of this door. Cloud might not either. Of course, that wasn't really much of a tragedy. Cloud was practically dead anyway. He would either recover or he wouldn't. And he himself... he was a relic. There were still Turks around, most likely, but the world did not need Turks. The world did not need him. He and Cloud were both relics, forgotten in a basement for too long to have any place besides the one carved out for them there. An old man lingering around older sentiments. A boy who had long since missed his chance to ever pursue newer ones. It wouldn't really be such a terrible loss for either of them.

Still, he supposed he must try. Lucrecia still had a place.

Vincent swiped the card and watched the door retract with a quiet humming noise. He adjusted his grip on Cloud and forced his knee to carry him up the stairs.

There were about twenty guns trained on him all at once the minute he set foot in the lab. He took out two right away as he turned the corner, scrambling for cover behind a desk. A third was close enough to knock out with a quick sleeping spell. That left twenty... at least until backup arrived, at which point his death warrant was signed anyway. He shoved Cloud further under the desk and risked a quick peek at the room around him.

Seventeen guards, with likely some higher ranking military personnel among their number. Five scientists that appeared to be scrambling for cover. Vincent recognised two of them.

He forced his breathing to slow. His ears were already buzzing from the sound of unshielded gunfire.

He heard something behind him and quickly flattened out on his stomach in time to shoot the man that had been sneaking around on his blind side with the rest of the cubicle. Sixteen left.

He couldn't carry Cloud with him, but couldn't leave him alone either. He doubted they'd target him given he was still drooling onto the floor, but he wasn't willing to risk the possibility that he could be wrong. Unless -- he could have sworn his eyes moved to follow him as he crept away along the wall to peek around the corner. No time to check for sure.

He encountered another two trying to flank from the front now that they knew he was headed around the other way. They were only MPs. Vincent was a former Turk. It wasn't really fair. Fourteen.

Controlled, deliberate, methodical. Two in the torso, and one in the head. Thirteen, then ten, change magazines, then eight, then seven...

There were noises. Things moving beyond the loudest silence. Something stopped to listen to the Other that were noises that were not the loudest silence. Not him. He was him. He was I. I am.

A loud crack sounded in Cloud's ear, making him wince in pain. It was too loud here. It was quiet before. He wanted to go back to the quiet. The noises around him began to drown it out. His eyes focused on something blurry.

White. Blurry white. And grey, and something red and black and brown that danced around him. He feebly reached for it.

The dancing stopped. He realised something had been at his back only when it was pulled away. The blurriness in his vision receded with the fog and the silence, and he could hear voices.

"...did you get here?"

"What have you done? What have you done, Lucrecia?"

The second voice... he knew that voice. Everything was a blur, not just his vision -- he couldn't seem to focus on anything but the floor beneath him, and the voices above him, which kept getting louder and louder.

"What reason could you possibly have to come back here?" A third voice. An icy, sticky voice, sharp and intent and unforgiving. Cloud hated it, and loved it, and a powerful hurt flared up in his chest. "You were a clever man. I'm sure you know how this will end."

Hojo. He hadn't been good enough for him. He could never be good enough. They'd hurt him because he wasn't good enough. He shivered.

"Behind me," said the second voice. "I brought him for you."

"The Series 3 prototype was discontinued six months ago," said the first voice. Soothing, twisting, indescribably beautiful, profoundly hungry, reaching into parts of himself that called for something he had no name for. Part of him.

Director Crescent. He'd dreamed of her touching him, the way Ma once had.

Ma... the village... Sephiroth... it was all gone now... everything was gone...

"Listen to yourself," said the second voice. "I implore you -- was this the world you wanted to create? You both set out for the betterment of mankind -- he's led you down a path much like your own in feature but unlike yours in virtue. He may have chosen, but you --"

"I thought I made my choice clear, Vincent. I thought you knew that as well."

"Your son, Sephiroth, surely --"

"Vincent... Sephiroth is dead," said the Director.

"And you would condemn another to that fate?"

He knew that voice. Cold and rough, like stone under stone under dirt and snow and frost. Magic rocks. A companion in the dark.

The Pale Man.

Cloud's eyes fixed on the shape above him -- the Pale Man was here. The Pale Man was with him. And the others -- he was real? He was real. The Pale Man was real.

"I set out for the betterment mankind, and Series 3 was a stepping stone towards that goal." Director Crescent was looking at him coldly now. He wanted to go to her and the Professor, but he couldn't move. The Pale Man was still standing between them.

"You were always a hopeless romantic, Vincent. We both know why you came here," said the Director.

"Is it is such a crime, that I believe you are worth saving?" said Vincent.

"There is nothing to save us from," said the Professor sharply. "And certainly nothing you could provide deliverance from in the first place. You should have remained in storage. Goodbye."

The sound of weapons cocking echoed around them. He couldn't move. He was trapped in his own body, and he was useless, and he couldn't move, and the Pale Man -- Vincent, after all these years, he'd been there for him, and he, Cloud, was still as useless as ever --

The world bent. The people around them seemed to refract and waver like a passing reflection. The loudest silence howled around him, impossibly loud, and the ground beneath him felt as though it were about to break at any moment and let it all in. Cloud's hand spasmed, desperately reaching for Vincent, who seemed to be a million miles away and right in front of him.

Vincent was consumed in a wall of flames. It happened almost instantly -- one minute he was standing there, convulsing, and the next he was crumpled on the floor, spasming intermittently, ragged screams quickly trailing off as what was undoubtedly spellfire rapidly charred his flesh. A moment later he stopped moving entirely.

The Pale Man was gone. Everything was gone. The Pale Man -- he saved him. He saved him, and he was gone, because Cloud hadn't done anything, and he was gone and he was real and he wasn't alone in the dark and he was gone and the pale man was gone and ma was gone and he was alone and he had never once been held or wanted by the pale man the director the professor all gone it was all empty empty empty empty empty --

There were many things Cloud remembered about that day. He remembered the hands, shoving him and Vincent's charred corpse into a disposal chute in the lab. He remembered it all being too much. He remembered falling, further and further, his already limp body impacting against metal and concrete, and still there was so much further to fall, and knowing there was nothing in the world that had ever wanted him, Series 3, a failure, alone, broken, who ruined everything he touched. He remembered the other things that had been thrown out all around him in Sector 2, about not knowing where the Pale Man's -- Vincent's body was, so that maybe once he might hold it, and know that something real had wanted him, Cloud, that the something was alive. He remembered the rain leaking down from the plate below, splashing onto his face, creating mud that he felt himself sinking into. He remembered screaming and screaming and screaming, and not knowing how to stop. He remembered understanding that no one could ever want Cloud or even Series 3, that no one would miss them, that the world moved further and further away the more he realised it, and that soon enough it didn't seem real, and then soon enough he wasn't real either. He remembered lying there, the water pooling up around him even as he drifted off into unconsciousness. Some time later, perhaps days, perhaps a week, he remembered a pair of rough, work-worn hands holding him, pulling him close, and moving him out of the mud garbage piled up around him, and carrying him to a little run down dive bar in the slums.

The one thing he didn't remember was the look of confusion on everyone's face in the tower, from the guards to Hojo to Lucrecia herself, because none of them had actually fired yet.

[xoannieboss]

911

Week Two: 🚑

My heart needed a break from dying babies and feeling helpless, so I decided to spend my second week in the emergency department, hoping this is somewhere I could actually be of use. Unfortunately, I think my heart is heavier still after this week. On Monday morning, within minutes of stepping into the ward, I passed a hallway with a single gurney that held a small body, covered completely by a Maasai cloth drape. The paper laying atop the body read simply:

Age: 5

Gender: Female

Cause of Death: Unknown.

I stepped into the bathroom to catch my breath.

Our first patient, a 60-ish year old male, presented with a blood-filled mouth, left sided hypertonia, right sided facial drop + hyperactive hand movement. It costs 12,000 TSH to be seen by a doctor. His coworkers, who transported him to the ER, had to pay before he was allowed in the doors. Point of care testing for HIV was immediately preformed: negative. They don’t have the ability to order a drug/tox screen. The next step, after collecting a limited history, was a head CT, but that costs 250,000 TSH (which is approximately three months salary for the patient). For hours, as the patient continues to respond minimally, the coworkers call friends and family members to see if they can put together enough money to pay for the CT scan. They finally conclude that it won’t be possible, but they can pay the 12,000 TSH it costs to be admitted for the week for observation. (Trauma Bay pictured below)

A plethora of unique patients roll in, one after another after another after another. None of them speak any English, making clinical investigation and management a slow and tedious process. Each patient seems more critical than the next. Unlike the United States, where most patients present when an affliction becomes noticeable and/or bothersome, patients here wait to present to the hospital until it’s the only choice they have. This is especially true in the urgent care setting, where I saw, most notably, esophageal cancer so advanced the patient could barely swallow water and Non-Hodgkins lymphoma present with a mediastinal tumor the size of a small grapefruit that had been symptomatic for over a year. The MD that I was with let out a big sigh and said, “I hate giving bad news like this because in all likelihood, she won’t be able to pay for treatment.” Making this a terminal diagnosis, even though it wouldn’t need to be in the States. This hit me like a lead pipe against the head: I would almost certainly be dead if I lived here at the time of my cancer diagnosis.

Thursday met us with perhaps the most gut wrenching patient yet. An 8 year old boy was brought in by his family, who discovered him convulsing when they went to wake him that morning. No real history could be ascertained. He appears dramatically malnourished. Pupils constricted but reactive to light, tachycardic with a mild fever noted, other vital signs normal. No nuchal rigidity. Blood sugar within normal limits. GCS of 7 (No verbal response, no eye opening, withdraws from pain). Diazepam 10mg IV push given. During the next few episodes of convulsions, his heart rate spikes to the 170s. No fluid has been initiated yet. It’s been at least 20 minutes now. Hospital personnel have started to sit down to chart, go check on other patients, take their break, etc. I’m frozen on the spot beside this child feeling sick to my stomach and helpless. It’s not my place, here, to interject my medical opinion. But, as I watch him start to seize again and his heart rate rise, I step out into the hallway and ask one of the intern doctors, “Should we start some fluid to decrease this heart rate?”. She responds, “Oh that’s a good idea!”, and returns a few minutes later with the equivalent of lactated ringers. When she returns to check on him 20-30 minutes later, he’s still convulsing. She decides to try Phenobarbital 100mg IV. Then another hour later, another 100mg IV. No change. They decide to admit him to the pediatric unit because they don’t know what else to do. Another patient comes into the trauma bay, so he’s taken off the monitor and left to await transport. Before he leaves the ED, I shine a light into his eyes and my fear is confirmed: pupils are pinpoint and fixed. Brain dead.

It’s infuriating, leaving the well-oiled machine that is emergency medicine in the States, and arriving to this. When a true emergency rolls through the doors at home, 15 people jump in, all with specific roles to fulfill. Everyone knows how dyer the situation is and we check every. single. thing. off the list of interventions to try before anyone even thinks of taking their eyes off the patient. We try and try and try and we don’t rest until the patient starts to improve or we know we’ve tried everything that we possibly can. Here, it seems as though death, even for children, is viewed as inevitable and it’s really not in our control whether it happens or doesn’t. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t have the supplies or the equipment. I’m not sure if, because people seem to be dying left and right, they just don’t have the energy to fight what seems like another losing battle. I don’t know. What I do know is that this week I really struggled to understand the care and empathize with the providers here. Our program, and the general mission of global healthcare education, tells us that we’re supposed to be here to learn, not to teach (or preach), but I’ve never felt as hopeless and powerless as I did in that room, watching that little boy lose brain function by the second, minute, hour. It was a million times worse because I know other outcomes were possible.

And still, more patients roll in. Here’s my favorite from the day: a 40-something year old male in a motorcycle crash. Open comminuted femur fracture. He sat on a stretcher for HOURS in the ED awaiting surgery.

By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted and I needed a break. One very special kid, we’ll call him “J”, (he’s given me permission to post the following pictures) has been on the pediatric inpatient unit for the entire time that we’ve been here. Three weeks, stuck in bed with nothing to do except listen to the sick and crying younger children in neighboring beds. One of my classmates, Cienna, bonded with him from day one and discovered that he loves drawing. She brought him pencils and a sketch book and he asked to draw her earlier in the week. I happily volunteered to be next in line so by the time Friday afternoon rolled around, it was the most welcome way to recharge for me and, I hope, for J too. I sat in front of him making funny faces and getting to know him while he worked.

He told me when he grows up he wants to be an artist, and maybe a doctor too. His favorite subject in school, besides art, is science. He loves it when it rains and he has three older brothers. His mom died when he was younger, so it’s his aunt and uncle who sit vigil beside him, day in and day out. His uncle, John, a professional artist, calls J his star student. I know I’ll cherish my “J original” for as long as I live.

If you’re in the market for a beautiful art piece, John ships worldwide. I’ll attach his business card. Their art is such a ray of sunshine in this sometimes cruel world. Thank you both ❤️