WHO: Keith Kogane and Blue Sargent WHAT: Commiserating losing people and being future parents, how in the heck? WHEN: Mid-November, sometime after Maura and Persephone's disappearance WARNINGS: None! STATUS: Complete!
Given it had been the first time he had dealt with the whole ‘future children coming back to the past to insert chaos into their lives’ thing, Keith thought he was taking the situation fairly well. While initially he had been alarmed by the whole idea, Kipp and Kimiko had quickly wormed their way into his heart and by the time that they had been sent back, Keith didn’t want to see them go. He could tell it was hitting Shiro hard as well, but after their initial reassurances to one another about their relationships and their future together, he didn’t know what else to do or say to make the other man feel better. So he did his best to stay present, to lavish love and attention on the man as he adjusted to his new arm, and to spend any free time they had together.
But occasionally, their free times didn’t line up, which occurred more often than not with their busy schedules. With Shiro returning to work full time and Keith juggling classes, Sanctuary duties, and patrol, they mostly saw each other during lunch breaks and at home around dinner time or later.
Tonight, it was one of those times Keith had a chunk of free time and Shiro was busy at the office. He had already dropped off a homecooked dinner for Shiro at the DOA - how good it was remained to be seen, but he hadn’t burned anything this time! - and Lance was off hanging out with his other friends. “We haven’t seen her in awhile. You wanna go bug Blue?” Keith asked Kosmo, as they walked the streets of the city with no real direction in mind. The space wolf glanced over at Keith and blinked at him, while at the same time he felt a fuzzy warmth in his mind that he associated with Kosmo and his unique telepathy. “Yeah, let’s go see if she’s working,” he nodded, as if the wolf had answered him.
Nino’s wasn’t too far from them and while they could have cheated and teleported there, it was a nice night for a walk. The crisp autumn night wasn’t overly chilly and they made good time in it, arriving at the pizzeria no more than ten minutes later.
Walking around to the back where he knew they left the backdoor open to keep the kitchen from overheating on busy nights like this, he poked his head in and waved at one of the busboys who was heading out for a smoke break. “Blue around?” He asked, getting a nod in return and getting pointed in the direction of some picnic tables set a ways from the dumpster, upwind thankfully. He spied his rival there, seemingly taking a break and gave the busboy his thanks as he headed in her direction.
“Hey,” he called out, when he and Kosmo were close enough. The wolf ran ahead of him and got all up in Blue’s space, nuzzling her side and demanding scritches.
Everything felt monumentally shitty. Not in any specific way but overall. Blue had started to get used to having a baby, the possibility of a family, when all the kids went back—or forward, however she wanted to look at. The sleepless nights and the diaper changing weren't that bad when she had this tiny child sleeping gently against her. She had been thankful for the distractions of the wedding, giving her something to focus on that wasn't work or being sad.
Then her mom disappeared. Then her aunt went back to, well, being dead, and her whole heart hurt again. Blue was determined to tough it out, be that stoic knife-happy little maggot that people had come to appreciate. But it was hard. It was harder when she was in places where she didn't have other people to keep her distracted.
She eagerly took her break out back, where she could aggressively tear at her pizza, chew it with equal annoyance like it offended her, and contemplate her life. What was she doing? What was she going to do now? Blue felt irritatingly lost, until she heard hey.
Her attention caught Kosmo first and she immediately started scratching behind his ears. "I'm unarmed, except for the extra utensils in my apron." Quickly pulling out a napkin-wrapped set, she placed it on the table between them, before pointing at the spread around her.
"I've got half a milkshake, veggie pizza, and cheesy bread that someone changed their mind on after they ordered it. Their loss, my gain." She paused, before adding, "Unless you want me to say you can't have any and argue for a few minutes before I eventually give in and share?"
When Blue reached for her apron, Keith raised his hands quickly. “Well, I came in peace and I’m hungry for food I haven’t made myself, so, pin the arguing for later?” As much as he liked giving Blue shit, he just wasn’t in the mood for it and free pizza made him softer than he normally was.
That and Blue kind of looked like she needed a break too. He was aware her mother had been sent back recently and he had considered reaching out to her about it, but he tended to get tongue tied and awkward about family related traumas. Keith simply didn’t want to make it worse than it was for her already by fumbling it when he tried to relate.
Putting his hands down, he swung a leg around so he could straddle the bench and went in for a slice of pizza. “You okay?” He asked cautiously, knowing she wasn’t, but not knowing what else to say.
"Oh, we're doing this, huh?" Blue said, when Keith asked her if she was okay. Was she okay? She kind of assumed she would have to be—she had been through all of this before. Maura was gone for the first half of her senior year. Persephone had died soon after that. Henry had been gone from Vallo for almost a year. It felt like everyone was always leaving her, and instead of staying sad she had to just deal.
Sometimes though, she didn't want to. Blue sighed heavily, and shrugged. "Meh," she said as she tore off an end of cheesy bread, but didn't eat it right away. Just held it in her hand as she explained. "Not really, but there's nothing I can do about it. Literally, nothing. I'm not that kind of magical person to zap my mom and my aunt back here—" Or make her be alive again, but Blue didn't say that. "Having Owen would have been a good distraction but I'm also not a time travel person either, therefore meh."
She squinted at Keith, propping her head up in her free hand. "Now it's your turn. You okay?"
“I’m very much okay with pretending nothing’s wrong, but Kipp told me we made you Kimiko’s godmother and your face is doing this weird thing where you look resigned and so...yeah, I guess we’re doing this,” Keith said, in a rushed ramble that had him wanting to stuff pizza into his mouth so he didn’t continue to embarrass himself.
So that’s exactly what he did.
Taking a big old bite of his pizza, he was sufficiently shut up while Blue spoke. He tried to chew not as obnoxiously as usual to allow her to speak uninterrupted and was mildly successful at that. Enough so that she could explain what was wrong anyway.
Just as he expected, it had to do with her mom (and aunt, he had never realized that Persophone had been Blue’s aunt and it made him instantly feel like a shitty friend) as well as her baby. He listened as best as he could and tried to formulate a decent response. Unfortunately, there was never a decent response to someone that was dealing with their grief, you could only be there for them when they needed it.
Instead, he listened and tried to remain as serious looking as possible while she spoke. But other than saying he was sorry, which accomplished exactly nothing, there wasn’t much he could say. So he tried to give her a response to the question he asked and came up with at least three different answers and decided to go with the one that would worry people the least. “I guess I’m okay? Kind of going through the same thing as you when it comes to losing future kids though. The only thing that’s really stopping me from leaning full tilt into grieving is the fact that I’m absolutely in no shape to be supporting two children.” A little more quietly, he added, “I think it’s really hitting Takashi hard though.” He was a little older and better equipped to handle surprise children, so he could see why it was worse for him. “But I don’t really know what to do for him other than feed him and make sure I’m there for him when he needs me.”
Blue mirrored Keith, finally eating some more food as he spoke. She didn't want to say there was relief in knowing someone else was going through the same thing as her—as a lot of people—but there was something nice about knowing she didn't have to do this alone. It was harder to bring it up at home, aware that children and parenthood were more complicated for others, and her response of just 'being sad' didn't really merit much mourning when it came to the future kids. She hadn't even wanted kids to begin with.
She nodded. "I think that's all you can do? Be there for people, let them be there for you. Not that I'm the one full of worldly advice. I barely even got out of the continental United States before coming here. But..." Blue made a thoughtful hum, picking at the little paper band around the utensil set. She had to be sensible about her next words.
"The one thing that kind gets me through the day is knowing we'll see them again, eventually? I know, I know, people are going to say the future is not determined, and I would give my mom a lot of grief about fate, fate sucks, I hate fate, blah blah blah." Blue still had a curse on her that was constantly knocking on destiny's door, but that wasn't applicable to this situation. "But you're right, we're not ready now, even if we wanted to be. So there's going to be a time that we are. I just never thought I'd miss changing diapers so it's weird."
"So weird," came the rushed words of agreement. Keith's eyes were wide as he gestured all around them with his pizza slice. "Is that normal? Because I feel that so deep in my soul and I have no idea what that means."
Well, other than knowing he was missing his kids a ton.
"It's nice," he admitted, picking a stray olive off his pizza and offering it to Kosmo, who happily opened his maw to catch it when Keith threw it at him. "To talk about this. I can't talk about this with Lance and Adora and Catra are so happy about their next step that I don't want to bring their moods down. And you get it in a way I don't think other people would." More quietly, he added, "It's nice to know that I'm going to have a family again one day, you know?"
This was a strangely softer side of Keith that Blue wasn't used to, but she didn't hate it. Their antagonist friendship was something she had come to rely on, but it was nice to know they had moments where vulnerability was okay.
She dropped her hand down underneath the table—no table food for Kosmo, but just the offering of scratching under his chin for a bit. "But yeah I know, trying not to bring people down when they are happy and you're just ugh." Not that it was a bad thing, just difficult to navigate. Especially when the people she was around were trying to keep her from being sad.
"You can miss people when you don't know when you'll see them again. That might be the most unfair part of all of this. It's hard to say that it's okay to be sad about it for now when you don't know when the end date will be," Blue said, with a shrug, but then she smiled. One of those small rare ones she had been saving over the last few weeks. "I didn't think I wanted a family, not in the typical sense, but it's kind of exciting? Proof that we didn't completely mess it up in the future?"
Dryly, Keith said, “Don’t get too excited. We probably mess them up a bit because it’s us.” But he allowed himself a little smile, directing it at Blue. “But I think that’s a part of being a parent. There’s no right way to do it and from the state of how the future looks, I think we’ll do okay. Still don’t know why I made you godmother though,” he teased, flicking a few crumbs her way.
He knew though. Even if it had only been a few months, he knew he could trust Blue to have his back and, subsequently, his kids’ backs if he needed it from her. It just felt right that he could ask this from her. It would probably take a while still to admit in public, but she was quickly becoming one of his best friends.
Keith vowed to himself to do better with checking on her, going forward.
“I took a stupid amount of pictures and am probably going to scrapbook them at some point to give to Takashi. Want to help me? Maybe make one of your own?”
"Probably because I know how to knife fight better than you, and she needed to learn from a strong independent woman," Blue said, smug, flicking crumbs right back at him. Even though Keith didn't say it, and Blue wasn't about to, given this solemn little truce they fell into, she knew what he meant. That their friendship grew into something bigger as the years went on. And Blue was okay with that.
"Yeah, I'd be down to. But—" She immediately raised her index finger because there were stipulations. Blue was crafty, sure, but she was not normally a scrapbooker. And while she probably would make something freakishly adorable and sickeningly cute, especially for Gansey and herself, she couldn't give him hope. She liked keeping her boyfriend on his toes.
"You cannot tell Gansey we're doing this. His scrapbooking game is intense, and if he learns I'm dabbling, he might try to get me to do it more and I have to keep him wanting more, you know?"
Maybe it was a little bit of a cheat to feel this comfortable with a fairly new friend, but Keith never did things half-assed anyway. Once his mindspace moved from ‘stranger’ to ‘friends,’ it was ride or die. Admitting would take awhile, but he was okay with this too.
“Only if you promise not to tell Takashi. The second he finds out, he’ll want to do these things together for everything and while I like spending time with him like that, we have limited time together and I rather make out with his face instead in that time,” Keith explained, tossing another bite of pizza at Kosmo who chowed down happily before trotting off to go sniff at some bushes nearby. “Okay, this was great and everything, but I gotta go before you want hugs.” He started to clean up around him, tossing used napkins away and shaking the crumbs off him.
Blue held up her hand, solemn like a pledge, despite never being in any kind of organized after-school program that sold cookies or went hiking. "Scout's honor. This can be our secret as long as you don't tell me about what you want to do instead of scrapbooking again."
She checked her watch, noting that her break was over anyway, and gathered up whatever Keith didn't clean up instead. "Pshaw, hugs. I'm about to stab you with a fork if you don't get out of here faster." Which was Blue speak for thanks for checking on me, but she still waved a wrapped set of utensils as a threat, just in case.