[ REUNITE ] - having been apart for some time, sender, upon seeing receiver for the first time, sprints to give them a hug. //from Didi! :'3
[ REUNITE ] | AKA I’M SORRY THIS IS 11 MONTHS LATE ILU DEX
They’ve known each other for years.
It all started when Nat fucked up and camped out on Didi’s lawn, crushing the violet and yellow petunias accidentally in the fumbling darkness, being too tired and mentally worn to care at the time. She had been running for months on end, almost a total year from what was left of CIPHER.
It tore at you, little by little. Being on the run for most of her life without her half next to her. Not realizing yet that she’d found a fresh scolding and a new sibling in the same morning. Natsusia tested the waters then, dangerous and rumbling. As she wisped away in front of the young woman and reappeared, flesh and bone phasing through, squatting on the white railing of the porch that nestled in the woods. Daring her through silence to report her to anyone that would listen.
The cicadas were blaring that year, it was a hot spring.
Didi met her with kindness, and shaky ground. But it was Didi’s ground nonetheless. That alone, she had made sure Nat was aware of. Gave her a room with a uncovered window, and Nat dutifully cleaned the house and kept it clean for the late nights that Didi tended to her schooling of cooking and tending to the restaurant.
Nat, much like a stray had brought gifts of unspoken thanks. Vibrant fabrics, old vintage suitcases that were brand new the decade Nat and her twin had grown in. Collars with special bells and medication for Leo’s sand fleas. The occasional vintage bottle of Rosé for Jasper once he had come round. That meeting had been rocky, Nat knew what he did, Didi relinquished the knowledge to her eventually. Within a few mediated chess games, Didi asked Nat to stay her twitching hand and so she did.
The occasional trip didn’t hurt though. Jasper was nearly jumping out of his skin in the beginning, with the parasitic woman. Now he pelts cereal at her in the mornings that she haunts. When she’s around anyway. Occasionally giving her various cicada casings that he’d find around as a way of keeping the peace.
Didi noticed the change when Nat would stumble through the window, bullet and stab wounds healing slowly. She’d gotten used to her wild lifestyle, damned to being a object of the government, rather a person. Jasper would express worry, which would harshly be brushed away by Nat, bristling at the slightest concern. The visits were less, once Lázaro came into the family. Scared him shitless too, but Didi loved him, and that was enough for her.
Didi didn’t pry, until Nat disappeared for longer than a year without communication during the holidays, collected calls through payphones. Didi kept the room tidy. Nat became more dodgy, realizing that the danger to the family was real as Didi and Lázaro were trying for children.
The last spring morning Nat visited was the early dawn where all four of them were nearly gunned down, held and restrained while they dragged Natsusia away, kicking and screaming. Didi put up a rough fight, knocking out two of the agents with a crack and a kick with their helmets on. Eventually they needed four men to hold her down, while she screamed bloody murder for Nat to be brought back. Glass coated the floor, bullets settling into the drywall, someone's blood on the floor, spattered.
The cicadas weren’t there that year, no blaring, harmonious buzz to welcome the family.
They were drilled for hours, and refused information to the invaders that took her. They kept the same story, some crazy woman that was needing a place to stay on occasion. Not much further from the truth in reality.
It’s nearly 10 years later that, briefly in the bustling crowd, she thought she saw someone dear. It too is brushed away, until she glances to her right, Martin chatting away to a lanky, strange woman about cicadas and their lifecycles. Intently, she listens to him with the occasional affirmative hum. Didi nearly drops Ronaldo, who had begged her to be carried. It was a hot spring, was she hallucinating? Carefully, shakily, she’s setting her son down before launching at the scarred woman.
It’s seconds but Didi is tiredly smacking Nat’s chest while they fall slowly to their knees in the market place, the three surgical scars hadn’t changed on her chest, thin lips form a smile, and then a exhausted grin. Enzo, Ronaldo, and Martin are confused, but are also piling on the hugs with their mother. Was this the ghostly woman she spoke of? They titter amongst themselves while Didi is yelling, crying, laughing, and weeping as Nat gently pats the brunettes head in the vice grip of a hug that she’s giving the other.
The cicadas are blaring again.
