WHO: Scorpia & Beau Lionett WHAT: Friendly check in at the tea shop, after a lot of people disappeared (bonus cute & sleepy TJ) WHEN: Backdated to around April 22nd WARNINGS: None STATUS: Complete
Beau was feeling anxious - or as she'd call it twitchy. Every time there was a big list of people sent home, she started thinking too much about what was better. She missed Veth and the Cobalt Soul and adventuring. But being here, where Yasha had a wonderful shop and they had TJ to raise rather than him being stuck with her parents, was arguably better. Fjord and Jester were getting married. Caleb and Essek were happy nerds with Kiri as their beloved bird daughter. She didn't want anyone to leave.
That said, she knew this feeling made her hover so she left Yasha at the Children's Nook helping Caleb and took TJ and their bag of books for a walk. Now they were stopping by the tea shop for something calming, and hopefully to say hi to Scorpia. She always made TJ smile.
"Scorpia, you in here?" Beau called out, only slightly embarrassed when another customer turned a sharp look of surprise at her. "Sorry." Her voice came out as more of a whisper-shout as she carried TJ towards the back of the shop. "Scorpia?”
Scorpia hadn’t yet lost anyone she was close to in the whims of Vallo, but every time one of those long lists got set to her phone, she worried that she finally would. But if Scorpia was good at anything, it was at repressing any anxieties she might have about herself, or the future, or.. Well, anything, really. Which meant that she’d come to work just as cheerful as always, dressed in a cute, frilly strawberry apron. She was just making her way out of the back, arms laden with tea refills, when she heard Beau and peeked up over the jars of tea.
“Beau!” she exclaimed, and hurried to the counter to dump the teas. One of them rolled off the counter, hitting the ground hard, but Stephen had been nice enough to magic everything against breaking when she started at Looking Glass Teas, so it was, luckily, unbroken, and she scooped down to pick it up and put it back on the counter before turning back to Beau.
“And you brought TJ! Hi!” She held her pinchers out in a silent request to get to hold him. “What brings you guys by today?”
Scorpia's exuberance was part of why Beau was here. It was contagious most days. The clumsiness didn't detract from it either. If anything, it added to her charm. TJ cheered at the sight of her and lifted his arms to be handed over. Once Beau had passed him off, she set her bag down by the counter and leaned against it.
"I was hoping to get a tea recommendation. Something to chill me out. All those people going home has me in a mood." She grimaced. Once upon a time, she'd never have admitted a weakness but she'd grown as a person and all that. Found family did that for a girl from a crap one. "Something TJ might like too?"
Scorpia happily took the child, giving him a firm but gentle hug before letting him settle on her pincer. She frowned thoughtfully, a claw to her lips. “There’s chamomile, of course. We have a nice blend that has a bit of oranges in it, and cinnamon. Oh, and one of my favourite nighttime teas is valerian nights! It has valerian and caramel and apple in it. It’s really nice, and kind of desserty. You like caramel, don’t you, TJ?” Scorpia asked, cooing at him.
But she was a little more somber when she turned back to Beau. “It really is kind of scary, isn’t it? Did you have any friends who went back home?”
Beau smiled at how careful Scorpia was with TJ. He’d never been afraid of her, but Beau herself worried a little sometimes. Not because she didn’t trust Scorpia, but because she liked her and she knew she had a good heart. She didn’t want her to feel bad for accidentally hurting TJ. But she also knew that trust counted for a lot. She tapped her fingers across the counter and hummed.
“Better take both. We spent enough money on books, we’ll need tea to drink while we read them to him.” TJ clapped his hands together and laid his head on Scorpia’s shoulder. Beau rubbed a hand over his back. “After he has a nap anyway.” Tucking some hair behind his ear, she sighed and shrugged. “None of my friends left, no. I don’t suppose I should even be stressed. I just don’t like surprises. I want to know everything. You know?”
Scorpia smiled down at TJ, not quite succeeding at not melting. If there was anything better than having a little one snuggle up against her, all soft and sleepy, then Scorpia wasn’t aware of it. She was careful not to poke him with the spikes on her shoulder as she began to prepare the tea leaves.
“Oh, I don’t think that you shouldn’t not be stressed. I mean, obviously being stressed is not great, but…” She frowned a little. “I mean, it is a little scary, isn’t it? When people could just disappear at any moment, just poof, and they’re gone, and you don’t know if you’ll ever get to see them again. And just because you weren’t friends with these people doesn’t mean they weren’t friends with other people, and who knows when our friends could be next? I don’t know what I’d do if Perfuma, or Catra, or Adora or anyone else just disappeared one day.”
For some reason, Scorpia not helping actually did help in a backwards way. Beau was one of those people who wasn’t great at getting herself out of a funk, but would fight tooth and nail for a friend, even if the fight was just about improving their mood. She smiled and took a deep breath.
“I guess that means we should just be more grateful we’re all still together. Sometimes I forget to be grateful for things. I…here, you don’t have to juggle him and the tea. Let me…” She carefully collected TJ, who snuffled sleepily and draped over her shoulder to keep dozing. “I swear he goes from running circles around me to a coma in no time flat.”
Scorpia reluctantly let Beau take TJ; it would be easier to actually do her work while not holding the toddler, but the place where he’d been cuddled against her was cool, deprived of his warmth. She wondered, distantly, if she and Perfuma would ever have children of their own, and then blushed at the thought.
“There’s a lot to be grateful here,” Scorpia agreed. “Especially now that so many of my friends from home are here." Even before that though, Vallo had been good. She'd missed Perfuma, but she'd made plenty of friends, almost none of whom had looked at her sideways or judged her for her her size and general clumsiness – in fact, Wanda and Stephen had even made sure that she could get a job she loved, handling small, delicate teacups and carefully measuring out tea, as she did now, and not break everything. It was easy to see how good Vallo had been for Catra – the last time Scorpia had had an actual conversation with her in Etheria, Catra had called her useless and Scorpia had called her a bad friend, and now Catra was one of the best friends a woman could ask for – but it had been good for Scorpia too.
She knew that people said that when you returned home, you didn’t remember your time from Vallo; Scorpia hoped that, even if it was true that they wouldn’t remember, they’d still go back home the best versions of themselves they’d been able to become.
“The children in the Horde were the same way, boundless energy until wham! They they hit the bound. Boundary?” She looked thoughtful for a moment, but she thought boundary was probably right. “Perfuma likes to practice mindfulness? It’s trying to live in the moment, without worrying too much about the past or the future, and just take in whatever’s happening in the moment. I’m not very good at it, but it’s nice to practice.”
“Yeah, the monk who trained me was the type to do shit like that too. Meditate anyway. I don’t know how much she lived in the moment.” Beau missed Dairon and her abrasive but morally upstanding ways. She was practically family. Better than Beau’s real family for the most part. Besides TJ. Beau smiled down at him and brushed his hair away from his sleeping face. “It’s a good idea though. Living in the moment. I think…that’s what I need to be doing right now.”
She lifted her gaze to Scorpia and flashed a troublemaker grin. “Maybe I’ll go prank Caleb. Steal Yasha away if he’s done using her for her muscles.” Setting her bag down, she dug in her pants for her wallet. “Maybe we can meet after you get off work and do something fun?”
“You could put purple hair dye in his shampoo!” Scorpia suggested helpfully. She had never really done much pranking herself, but she’d seen that one on TV and it had made her smile. “But yes, please! We could go do karaoke, or to an amusement park!”
Beau laughed. “Essek would probably enjoy that.” Most likely, she’d prank Caleb at the store with something that he’d only glare at her for a moment about. But she might have to save that purple dye idea for later. Smirking, she pulled out her money to pay for the tea, and then readjusted all her bags and sleeping toddler to leave.
“Karaoke sounds great. Well, getting hammered and then doing karaoke sounds great anyway.” She couldn’t say she was all that great at it, or knew very many songs still. And now with a toddler in the house, some of the songs stuck in her head where annoying earworms for children. But she enjoyed the vibe of karaoke anyway. She held out a hand for her tea purchase. If nothing else, this little chat had loosened her up and she would leave with a smile. “Message me later? I’m going to head back to the Nook.”
Scorpia put the tea in one of the shop’s cute gift bags, and looped the bag over Beau’s arm. “I’ll call you when I’m done work and we’ll make a plan. I bet you’re great at karaoke, drunk or not!”
It was nice, Scorpia thought, to have friends to get to do things with; even if they sometimes disappeared, she didn’t think she’d trade it for anything.