Ever since they met, Luna had looked up to Cate. From the first moment when she saw her and Newt spar, saw the strength and skill that the older girl possessed. She was a lot more than just a friend or just a mentor. She was a role model, one of the few female ones Luna could remember herself having. Growing up she had been surrounded by males. Learnt their ways, adapted their speech, their mannerisms and attitude. Ninety percent of the time she was more of a boy than she would perhaps ever be a girl. But it was women like Cate that didn’t make her regret being born a girl instead of a boy. That reinforced the belief that women were just as strong, just as capable, just as fierce and determined and independent. That it was okay for her to strive to be all those things. “See I knew you would understand it.” Luna found a small smile. Strained, difficult to keep, but genuine. No matter how this all ended, one thing that never seemed to change was Cate’s ability to empathize. Luna admired her for that too..
It baffled her sometimes, and she was perhaps twice as grateful for how Cate managed to empathize and see things from her perspective, because she herself struggled a great deal to do the same. She liked to think that she was learning, growing, evolving.. but in the end the horrible truth was that at her core Luna’s independence and survivor strength inhabited her from truly being able to do the same with others. Strangers at least. With her friends, with those she loved, she did make an effort.
“Ten whole days? Oh fuck. I’d go bat shit crazy..” she confessed, a grimace on her face. She was making a point of ignoring the nurses, as well as she possibly could. Pretending she and Cate were the only two people in the room. Instinctively, Luna too leaned in closer as Cate spoke in a whisper. “Bet it is.. have you had any updates? I haven’t heard shit.. I’m sure Nik understands though..”
When she had first joined the Strix all those years ago, it had not been in an effort to make friends, or to find family—it had solely been an attempt to take back some measure of control over her life, to feel even the slightest bit powerful in the face of everything that had ever tried to hurt her. She had certainly not set out to become a mentor of sorts to the trainees, and especially to those younger than her, who came into the gang around the same time or after she did. But what the brunette had found in the organisation that she had pledged her allegiance to wasn’t a place that changed who she was. It was a place that reminded her of who she had always been. Someone who was clever, capable and compassionate, and who would always put her faith in people, not in the institutions they belonged to.
It wasn’t being a part of the Strix that made her loyal to Luna, to Seraphina, to Newt and Nik and Devlin, and everyone else in the gang. It was the fact that she cared about them as people. And she would always try to understand them as individuals, empathise with them as individuals, and ultimately, act in their best interest as individuals. It was an attitude that might one day put her at odds with her leaders, and she knew that; but in a world that constantly put her in the grey zone of her own morality, it was the only thing that she could think to do. The brunette simply couldn’t live a life in which she wasn’t serving her own conscience.
Dropping her gaze to her phone, she scanned through her incoming messages, unnerved by the helpless feeling that came from not simply being able to go out there and find the facts by putting herself in the middle of the mess, like she would usually do. “We were hit pretty hard,” Cate whispered back, shaking her head. “Reagan’s in the hospital too. Not to mention the countless civilians who became collateral damage to an attack that I’m ninety percent sure was directed at us. That’s… That’s crossing a line, Luna. A line that should never be crossed.”
