One of my favorite headcanons is that Fox joined the Warriors as a teenager, and quite short, but one random day she had a growth spurt and in a short time she was taller than most of the Warriors lol
Fox has her first period, luckily for her, Cowgirl is there.
The silence left by the Warriors' absence from the apartment floated in the air, interrupted only by two presences.
"Hey, Fox!" Cowgirl's lively voice echoes through the floor from the kitchen. "Can you give me a hand with dinner?"
"Sure," the young girl replies from the living room, closing her comic and getting up from the weird position she'd adopted on the couch.
With her characteristic silent step, it didn't take long for her to reach the kitchen, making Cowgirl jump when she turns around and sees her standing there like a ghost.
"Jesus! We need to put a bell on you or something!"
The older woman hands her a knife and points to the vegetables next to the cutting board. While Fox begins her task, Cowgirl walks to the other end of the kitchen to boil some water.
"I don't think I'll eat much today anyway," Fox comments distractedly, as she continues chopping the vegetables. "My stomach hurts a little…"
"Did you eat anything weird?" She asks casually as she fills the kettle with water, but with a slight hint of concern in her voice.
"Maybe… I don't know," she shrugs.
After Cowgirl puts the water on to boil and turns around, she sees Fox with her back to her, still cutting the vegetables. And it's hard to miss the dark stain that stands out on her blue shorts.
"Hey, Fox… I think you stained yourself," she comments naturally.
The sound of the knife stops.
"Uh? Where?" She asks, instinctively looking at her shirt for a sauce stain or something.
"In the back. I think it got to you," she comments, with that indiscretion that characterized her. "I guess that's where the stomach ache is coming from."
Cowgirl expected the young girl to excuse herself to change, perhaps with some embarrassment, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Instead, she saw confusion fill Fox's face for a few seconds, then the knife stopped moving completely, and her face lost all trace of color.
"Hey, don't be embarrassed, kid," she says quickly, keeping her tone relaxed but adding the necessary sensitivity. "It's happened to all of us, it's no big deal. I'm telling you this as someone who's lived only with women for years."
"I-it's not that," Fox says, her voice sounding so quiet, as if she were hiding from someone chasing her. "It's just that I, well…" Her voice dies along with her words.
Cowgirl raises an eyebrow, starting to notice the girl's reaction to a simple stain is a bit weird.
"What's wrong? Does it hurt a lot?" Cowgirl asks.
Fox shakes her head.
"Did it come too early?"
Another shake.
"Too late?"
She shakes her head again.
Cowgirl remains silent for a few seconds, trying to think of what else could warrant such a reaction.
"Don't you... know where we keep the pads?"
Cowgirl trusts the younger girl's silence.
"And why didn't you say so before? You've been here for months! How have you even managed with—"
Fox looks at her during that last question, her eyes reflecting what seems to be a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety.
The gears in her head start turning: the disproportionate panic reaction, her not knowing where the pads are kept, the way her eyes reflect a kind of anxiety she knew all too well…
Then everything clicked.
"This is your first period, right?"
Fox looks away and speaks in an almost imperceptibly shaky voice. "Maybe…"
For just a second, Cowgirl allows herself to be surprised. Fox is 15, almost 16; of course, the possibility wasn't zero, but she'd simply assumed she would have already gone through this.
"Okay, then…" she finally says, "I'll show you where the pads are. Go get some clean clothes from your room, and I'll wait for you in the bathroom."
Fox nods, still refusing to meet her gaze, and with her typical light step, she hurries to her room.
Once they're in the bathroom, Cowgirl opens the cabinet and takes out a small basket. Inside it are multiple types of pads, each type arranged in a single row.
"Try not to mess it up too much when you take them out," the older one says. "Swan hates that."
Fox nods slowly, staring almost intimidated at the basket in front of her.
"Do you know how to put them on?" Cowgirl asks, still having an intuition of what the answer would be.
As expected, Fox shook her head, shrugging slightly.
"It's okay, I'll explain. Take out a pad."
Fox freezes for a few seconds, her gaze going all over the basket as if she were reading hieroglyphics. She finally settles on taking out one of the smallest ones in the basket, the ones that looked less intimidating.
"Mmm... that won't do much good, at least not in the first few days of your period," Cowgirl says with a small laugh, but without malice.
A blush quickly fills Fox's cheeks, and she awkwardly puts the pad back in its place as if it had suddenly burned her hands.
"Sorry!" She says quickly as she puts the pad down. "Sorry, it's just... I don't know... no one ever…" Her voice was low and slightly shaky, as if the shyness that had dominated her so much in her first weeks in the gang had manifested again like a ghost.
Cowgirl's head tilts slightly to one side as a soft smile appears on her face. A feeling that had begun to manifest itself since that anxious look Fox had given her a few minutes ago began to bubble up. It wasn't pity, it was recognition.
"Don't worry," she finally says, then points to some significantly larger pads. "Use these, they're the regular ones. These ones here are the overnight ones, they're a little longer. The ones you grabbed are usually used in the last few days of your period when there isn't as much flow. There are more variations, but I think you'll be fine with the basics for now."
Fox was paying attention as if she were being told the secrets of the universe, and she maintained that same attention when Cowgirl began to explain how to properly open, position, secure, remove, and dispose of a pad.
Once that was explained, Cowgirl left the bathroom to let her do her thing.
Fifteen minutes later, Fox finally emerged from the bathroom, wearing new black shorts and carrying her dirty clothes in her hands.
As she went to put her clothes in the washer, she was still actively avoiding Cowgirl's gaze, her eyes still holding that embarrassed gleam they'd had this whole time.
Cowgirl, while leaning against one of the kitchen cabinets, gives a comforting smile before starting to speak.
"You know you have nothing to be ashamed of, right?" she says, and she can see Fox tense up a little. "Like I said, we've all been through this. It's a natural process and—"
"I'm not ashamed of having my period," Fox says suddenly, her voice firm but at the same time slightly shaky. "I already know it's natural and all that."
Cowgirl frowns in confusion. "Then why do you act like I'm going to throw tomatoes at you every time you say anything about it?"
"Because—" Fox pauses briefly, doubt invading her face, before giving a frustrated snort and continuing, "Because I don't know anything about this! I'm almost 16, I should already know these things, right? God, 15 minutes ago I didn't even know how to use a damn pad! I just—"
She paused again, her voice slightly cracking, and takes another breath.
"I'm the only 15-year-old idiot who doesn't understand these things. I feel…so dumb."
A small silence invaded the kitchen. It was broken by Cowgirl, when she realizes this situation merits her experience, even if it meant opening Pandora's box.
"You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, kid. If it makes you feel any better, nobody explained it to me either."
For the first time, Fox meets Cowgirl's gaze, perplexity invading her look.
"Really?"
Cowgirl's smile grows a little, but with a melancholy very uncharacteristic of her, unlike her usual mischievous airs.
"When it came to me, I was just as, if not more, confused than you, and my mom just threw me a pack of pads and said, 'Use them.' Not another word. And I was pretty shy about that kind of thing to ask anyone else."
"Shy? You?"
The perplexity in her voice made her burst out laughing.
"Hey, I was like 12, I was a kid!" she exclaims with a smile. "Besides, let's just say all that…women stuff was practically taboo in my house." She paused briefly. "It took me years to feel comfortable in my own skin…years to start earning the nickname 'Cowgirl.'"
All those years flashed through her memory in a second, years of insecurity, confusion, and shame.
Cowgirl coughed falsely as she felt Fox's gaze, suddenly feeling like she'd talked too much. But still, she continued.
"I learned on my own. You have no idea how many tries it took me to learn how to put a pad in the right place…and without any sticky part facing up."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, I know," she laughed a little, only to return to a slightly serious tone. "And that was just the tip of the iceberg. I also had to learn everything else on my own: how long they lasted, how often they came, the symptoms…I remember feeling confused, lost, and so embarrassed."
For a second, Fox could see a flicker of vulnerability that Cowgirl never let show in her daring facade. Something in her eyes made her think she was digging up memories from a past she had preferred to ignore.
"And you don't have to go through that too." Her vulnerable expression suddenly mixes with determination. "I'm here, and the others too. You don't have to figure it out on your own."
Their gazes met.
"So, any questions you have, anything at all, just tell me," Cowgirl says, with a smile that inspired confidence. For a second, just for a second, Cowgirl looked at Fox, but she didn't see her, but a reflection of that past she had kept so hidden.
Fox looked back at her, feeling the opposite of the judgment she expected to receive if any of the Warriors discovered how little knowledge she had about her own body. She felt understood in a way she hadn't expected; she almost felt like Cowgirl was the best person she could have been stuck with in that situation.
"I'd like to ask you things... but honestly, I have no idea what to ask," her voice came out somewhat timidly, but at least putting aside her embarrassment.
Cowgirl smiled sideways. "Then I guess I'll explain the basics, but let's have this conversation while we cook. So many deep words made me hungry."
And so, each of them returned to the task they had abandoned.
At first, Cowgirl was the only one talking. She explained what she thought was most important as if it were about the weather, like the cycles, the symptoms, ways to relieve pain, etc.
At first, Fox feared it would be an awkward conversation, but the way Cowgirl spoke about the subject so casually, so normally, gradually gave her the confidence to ask her own questions derived from her explanations, and Cowgirl always answered them patiently and honestly.
"What if I don't have any pills? Or what if it's too hot to put anything warm on? Do I just stand there writhing in pain?"
"You can always resort to dark chocolate."
"Chocolate can do that?!"
Cowgirl laughed. It was almost cute to see Fox so surprised by each new revelation.
"I still don't understand…" Fox says later as they both set the table.
"What?"
"Why I only got it now? I mean, in eighth grade, most of the girls in my class already had it… Am I sick?"
Cowgirl shakes her head. "I don't think so. Many get it before 14, but every body progresses as it wants. I've also met girls who got it later. It's not weird."
Fox nods as she sits down, satisfied with the answer.
"Besides," Cowgirl adds as she sits down, "When you got here, you were… significantly less healthy than you are now. That influences it quite a bit."
The shared memory, still quite recent, floated in the air. How she'd been found by Cleon, with her bones sticking out of her skin, probably malnourished, and with eyes that reflected more stress than any teenager should go through.
She had changed quite a bit over those months. Her cheeks were now fuller, and her limbs were slowly starting to gain strength. Her eyes, once alert and anxious, had slowly adopted that determination and youthful energy that the group so sorely needed.
"I'm glad to see how you've changed, Fox."
Feeling the warmth in Cowgirl's gaze and words, Fox offered her a shy smile back.
Before starting to eat, Cowgirl put something right next to Fox's plate.
"And this?"
"Dark chocolate," Cowgirl replies with a wink. "Someone needs it."
Fox gives her one last grateful smile before finally starting to eat.
Why are the Tony Awards so fucking inaccessible in my country? I'm from Chile, and it's been IMPOSSIBLE for me.
I already missed Act 1 because I couldn't find where to watch it. I know you were supposed to be able to watch it for free on Pluto TV, but when I downloaded it, I couldn't find anything about the Tonys. So I guess it's not available in my country.
And you're supposed to be able to watch the official ceremony on Paramount+, but I can't find anything related to the Tonys there either, and apparently you have to buy a specific Paramount version to watch it(?
Also, in some Latin American countries, you can supposedly watch them on the Film & Arts channel. I actually remember watching the 2022 Tonys there, but it turns out that a year or two ago they removed that channel from my TV company 😭
Literally, my only hope is a dubious link I found on Twitter lol
"I witnessed both my oldest son and my husband who also cheated on me lowkey sacrifice themselves in a duel, which had left me and my 7 children in a debt. I hope that at least in another universe, I can be happy."
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