#procrastinated both work and the next chapter of jtta so i could type all this out before i forgot it and i do not regret it

[journey-to-the-attic]

Eri from BNHA IK

A small, pale child with a horn appears in the room, cover head to toe in bandages, shaking and afraid for her life.

She blends in with Devildom really well, but any loud noise is enough to send her to tears, and its just really hard for her to feel comfortable and safe here. But witht the help of familial love and bonding, it all works out!

Once they get close to her, Asmo says, 'why don't you smile ik? you'd look more adorable then you already do!' IK pauses for a moment, stares at him, and tries to smile. But she can't.

Ik meekly whispers, "I'm sorry, but... how do you smile...?'

The room goes silent. Does.. does Ik not know how to smile?

You can continue from here!

ohhh my god i have been thinking about this since yesterday (forgive me for not answering immediately, i needed to stew in the angst potential for a bit)

there is so much hurt/comfort potential in this okay hold on

so logistical stuff out of the way: ik doesn't necessarily need to be from bnha's setting since its cast and setup doesn't have much bearing on her situation, she can just generally be from a universe where having supernatural powers/sci-fi nonsense is a thing

i'm only somewhat familiar with eri's story, what i know is mostly from screen caps and wiki pages - i know she has a time-rewind type power, but since we're taking this out of that setting, we might as well play with the power itself too

(in hindsight i got kinda carried away with the backstory - but in my defence, a long time ago whump was my whole thing, so i suppose it leaked through here sdfsp)

so let's say it's kind of like venom - a dark, goopy symbiote that's attached itself to ik's... soul i guess?? it isn't removable is what i'm saying

she was born a regular baby, but maybe her dad gave her away (because he was unable to raise her), and failed to do a background check on the foster agency he gave her to, who passed her onto a scientific organisation of questionable integrity as soon as she could walk

at which point they infected her with the symbiote with the intention of studying its effects on her body (she is. two years old)

the little horn is a mutation as a result of her body playing host to the symbiote - maybe it grows when the symbiote gets aggressive

so the experiments mostly involve exposing ik to a range of stimuli in order to see how the symbiote reacts

and they want as extreme a reaction from the symbiote as possible - that way they can gauge its maximum power

i won't go too graphic but the aim of the stimuli is often to put ik in as much as fear/pain as possible without killing her, and each stimulus experiment is usually run multiple times too

the plan is to figure out the symbiote's full potential and range of abilites, then weaponise it, but the researchers don't get as far as that before POOF, ik ends up in the devildom - at the age of six

the symbiote goes haywire as soon as she appears, because she doesn't recognise her surroundings and all these unfamiliar figures around her are terrifying - if they'd been human, everyone might well have died, but diavolo and lucifer combined are powerful enough to restrain the symbiote and intimidate it enough to retreat

which just leaves this tiny bandage-covered child, shaking uncontrollably under the table

it probably takes forever for the others to get her to calm down enough to come out, mostly because she doesn't really understand what they're saying

considering there wasn't a need for her to be educated for the experiments to be carried out, the scientists never bothered to teach ik how to read or write, and she doesn't understand much spoken language either - apart from commands like "come", "stay", "be quiet", "eat", etc

mammon also arrives just as ik is very slowly shuffling towards diavolo's outstretched hand, and he slams the door open so loudly that she immediately pulls back to hide again

guess who's mad at mammon for that one? everybody

but then they stop being as mad when mammon manages to get ik to come to him within like five minutes, while they were all trying for like half an hour

the difference is that everyone else was trying that whole soothing, quiet way of talking, which was way too similar to how the researchers talked to her - whereas mammon had that more casual, rough manner that ik had never heard before, which indicated to her that he was safer

it's honestly exhausting for everyone involved for at least two months straight because taking care of ik requires so much patience - the smallest things set her off, and they have to be extremely careful not to lose their temper in the slightest

plus the destruction that the symbiote causes when she inevitably gets scared can be pretty tiring to repair

but they keep going because for the love of everything good in the universe, this little kid just deserves to be happy, and she absolutely should not be given up on, even if so much cautious has to exercised around her

plus those kaboom moments make it all worth it

i imagine that there are like, a series of short kaboom moments for each character, culminating in one really BIG kaboom moment for all of them

here's what i mean by kaboom moment: your entire chest hurts (but in a good way) and you want to cry so hard so badly but you're also so warm and fuzzy inside holy shit

(off the top of my head, the bit in undertale where frisk hugs asriel after the final true pacifist fight is a big kaboom moment for me)

anyway let's talk about the brothers' kaboom moments! these aren't necessarily in chronological order, this is just the order i thought of them in

(also to cut out unnecessary drama, in this au belphie never got locked in the attic or anything)

(there's still, like, character development going on for the others, since the fact that they all mutually want good things for the little kid means they have to communicate so that their tensions don't get in the way)

mammon:

so ik mostly refuses to be touched for a while - if you do it when she's not expecting it, you're very likely to set her off, and if you're unlucky the symbiote will bash you into the nearest wall

but sometimes she gets something on her face that needs to be wiped off, or there's a set of stairs that she'd exhaust herself climbing, and so the others start doing this thing where they'll make a humming sound to let ik know they're about to touch her

ik slowly gets used to this and no longer panics as much when people get too close, but she still refuses to be held for too long

but then, one day...

ik shuffles up to mammon and stares up at him for a bit, then very quietly makes that humming sound herself

he looks back down at her like '??', but then realises what he thinks she's trying to tell him when she makes the noise again

so, veeeery carefully, he picks ik up, steeling himself in case he's interpreting wrong

but ik just gives him an approving sort of look, then relaxes and leans forward to rest her chin on his shoulder

kaboom!

and then he won't shut up about it for the entire rest of the week

(ik starts letting the others pick her up for non-essential reasons as well, and one time while mammon's holding her she reaches out for beel instead, and mammon is so devastated that he sulks for hours until levi tells him that ik probably thought his arms were getting tired)

satan

so lucifer has already put himself in charge of slowly teaching ik how to count as well as the alphabet, but it's going pretty slowly, and in the meantime satan takes it upon himself to teach her how to recognise certain objects

he knows she's mostly non-verbal, so satan doesn't expect ik to repeat after him - he just makes a point of indicating certain objects every now and then and telling her what they are

he also reads to her sometimes, and if an object comes up in the book that is somewhere in the room around them, he'll point to it

ik listens very carefully, and even though there's no way of knowing whether she actually remembers what he's telling her, satan keeps going

and then, while satan's reading to her, she taps him on the arm to get him to stop

eventually he figures out that she wants him to go back to one of the words he just read, so he goes back and repeats the paragraph he just finished, and ik stops him on the word 'friend'

she puts her finger on the word on the page... quietly repeats it... and then points to satan

kaboom!

now, every time he reads out the word 'friend', he and ik point to each other :)

levi

ik ends up spending a substantial amount of time in levi's room with him because she stays at the house of lamentation pretty much all of the time, and levi's home the most (since he sometimes does online lessons)

ik likes to just sit and watch henry swim around in his tank while levi does his thing, and she seems fascinated by how his tech works, but mostly uninterested in watching the actual anime or playing the games with him

levi doesn't mind, but he does make sure to offer often just in case she changes her mind

and eventually she does!

levi's sitting there playing something and ik approaches him, sits down beside him, then reaches out and pats his controller when he pauses in surprise

he asks quietly (trying to contain his excitement), "d'you wanna play?"

and ik nods. so he goes and gets another controller for her, and very patiently teaches her the controls

the first thing ik does when he loads up a multiplayer platformer is walk her character over to his, then jump up and down several times

kaboom!

levi doesn't even know why this moment hits him so hard, it just does

lucifer

so i mentioned earlier that he's teaching ik the alphabet as well as how to count

once he starts teaching her how to read and write simple words (with satan's help), he starts encouraging ik to use her voice more, since she knows a lot more now (also thanks to satan and his reading)

it's very simple stuff, but lucifer's so proud when ik picks things up, is this what it's like to be a father??

he teaches her how to write everyone's names, and she scrawls his out in very wobbly handwriting, then points at him and says very clearly 'lu-ci-fer'

it's the first time she's ever called him by name and it makes him tear up a little, but it isn't even his main kaboom moment - this is:

one time at dinner, she taps him on the arm, then points around the table at everyone and goes 'one, two, three, four, five, six, seven', then looks up at him, and lucifer smiles in very proud approval

but then ik pauses, like she's just remembered something.

and she points around the table and counts them all again - but instead of stopping at seven, she points to herself, then asks, "eight?"

and kaboom!

of course everyone reassures her that "yes, eight!", and meanwhile lucifer is trying very hard not to blink because he does not want his brothers to see him cry

belphie

as i said before, belphie wasn't locked in the attic in this au, and even if he retains that 'humans are the reason all the bad stuff happened' mindset, there's no way he's going to extend that to this traumatised child, what the hell do you take him for??

so anyway....

it takes ages for ik to settle into the house of lamentation enough to sleep properly instead of in short bursts, and she often refuses to go to sleep until everyone is out of the room and she's been reassured several times that the door is locked, and that it'll only be opened once it's time to wake up

sometimes she has nightmares, and belphie is always the first to both realise when she's having them, as well as head down to comfort her

he always insists on staying behind even once ik's calmed down, and for a while this is the only time ik will go to sleep with someone else in the room

belphie often brings ik to watch the stars with him since the company feels nice, and normally she just sits there and listens to him talk about constellations and stuff

but then one day, while they're both just stargazing in silence, ik shuffles over and curls up against belphie's side

that'd be devastating in and of itself, but then belphie looks over and realises that she's gone to sleep

kaboom!

he's so emotional that he can't even get to sleep himself, even though this'd be the perfect moment to

asmo

ik arrives in the devildom wearing this hospital-gown type thing, and since that's the only thing she's used to wearing, she has no idea how to put on other kinds of clothes - and of course she won't let anyone help her dress

so asmo digs around and finds some old but really soft t-shirts, then shrinks them a little, and they work fine

eventually ik becomes more okay with wearing the simpler and comfier outfits he picks out for her, and even if he's dying to dress her up a bit more, asmo'll only do things that ik's comfortable with, so he doesn't

of course she doesn't let him touch her at first, but after a while she'll let him brush her hair - though the nails are still a no-no

because he can't go too ham on the clothes, he buys ik a lot of other trinkets to make up for it when he goes shopping - cuddly toys, little animal figurines, that sort of thing

one of ik's favourites of these is a little plush panda, and she starts bringing it with her from room to room

belphie asks her what the panda's name is, and ik looks a little surprised, like she hasn't considered it before - then slowly says that it's momo

at first asmo doesn't think much of this, but then another day, he gets a little curious and asks, "why momo?"

ik replies very seriously, "is momo. like you."

it takes asmo a second but eventually he figures it out, and...

asmo -> mo -> momo

kaboom!

it takes all of his strength to not squeal and startle her

beel

so ik isn’t used to eating much, since before she’d be given most of the necessary nutrients through a drip, and meals were usually the sort of fare you get on airplanes

at first she’ll only eat plain rice/bread, and very small portions of them at that

so of course beel takes it upon himself to help ik try more food!

he asks around for all sorts of dishes for her to try, diligently making sure none of them could even possibly be dangerous to her, and keeps careful track of which ones she does and doesn’t like

it’s a long process since he has to take it slow, but he’s alright with that

he’s very worried about how little of the food ik will eat though - she’s so little, how is she supposed to grow if she doesn’t eat enough??

so he makes sure she has lots of little snacks throughout the day - and ik pays attention to this

ik often comes to watch beel do his workouts - she seems to enjoy sitting on his back when he does pushups, or riding on his shoulders when he goes for a run, and sometimes she copies him when he does his stretches, it’s very cute

and then one day, after he finishes his exercise and is winding down for a bit before he showers, ik pulls a little bag of biscuits out of her pocket and hands it to him

kaboom!

he thanks her profusely and makes sure he savours every last crumb

the Ultimate Kaboom:

and now we finally get to where the ask left off!

so it’s been a while at this point, ik’s settled pretty comfortably into life in the devildom, and she can talk much more fluently - though she still usually elects to remain quiet

and so asmo asks her why she doesn’t smile more, and ik looks at him for a moment... then tells him she doesn’t know how

the others are kind of devastated - because it’s only now that they realise that they really have never seen ik smile

they’ve just been mistaking the times her eyes lit up in response to their smiles as smiles of her own

of course, they reassure her that it’s alright, but honestly they all have a bit of a cry once they’re alone

like, they know that this isn’t some metric for it to be measured by, and that ik’s tremendously more happy now than she was when she arrived... but there’s some part of them that says they still failed her, because hasn’t smiled even once

they get together for a serious talk about it, and eventually decide that it’s unfair to ik to keep dwelling on this, because it’s not her fault, and this is the sort of thing that needs to happen on its own anyway

and then, eventually, it does!

so ik has to be away from the brothers for a while because there’s a sick bug going around them, and they don’t know whether or not it’s infectious to humans

plus it could be extra deadly if it is, and it’s better to just be safe - so ik stays at the purgatory hall in the mean time, and the brothers call to talk through simeon or solomon’s d.d.d.s when they can

(ik’s comfortable with the other characters at this point as well, i just didn’t want to make this even longer than it already is by including them)

finally, once the bug has cleared up and all of the checks and stuff have been completed, they decide to have a nice dinner together at diavolo’s to celebrate

ik isn’t told exactly why they’re going to his castle, she’s just under the impression they’re visiting - so she’s a little confused when they all just stand silently in the ballroom for a bit

but then the brothers arrive, and it’s the first time ik’s seen them in person in nearly three weeks

and she’s just overjoyed, she doesn’t know how to express it - and she doesn’t realise she’s doing it, but she smiles wide for the first time ever

KABOOM!!!!!!

she runs up to them and crashes into mammon’s legs, and it’s a good thing he immediately scoops her up - since, with her face buried in his jacket, she can’t see everyone else dissolving into a puddle of tears

the sheer power this child holds