#Kuai Liang is Frost's Dad and I will accept no criticism

[running-with-the-feels]

Just a thought but like, what if Frost hadn't been kicked out of the Lin Kuei for attacking Hanzo? What if she ran away?

Frost and Kuai Liang are very similar characters at their core. They both grew up as weapons in other people's hands (Frost in the Black Dragon fighting pits and Kuai Liang in the Old Lin Kuei) and had very few people around them they could trust or confide it. They both spent most of their lives fighting to survive and becoming monsters because there was nothing else for them to be, there were no other options.

And then Frost joins the Lin Kuei, and it's implied that there's a tournament/try outs thing to determine who he teaches and who he doesn't, so this is also a thing she Fought for. It's something she Wanted.

And then Kuai Liang looks at her and just sees so much of himself in her (though her anger is something he struggles to understand) and makes her his apprentice (I hc that he only found out about her powers later on and pls someone ask me about that I am Dying to talk about it, pls give me an excuse) and suddenly she has a connection to another person.

Kuai Liang is the first person in her entire life to treat her with any sort of dignity or kindness and though she rails against it at first, she also settles into it pretty quickly. After like, three months of training, she is Very Attached in a way she has never allowed herself to be.

He is literally the only person besides herself that she has ever cared about, and the closest thing to a parent she's ever had.

So of Course she panics when he tries to make peace with Hanzo, bc as far as she knows, Hanzo will take the first opportunity he can find to run a sword through Kuai Liang's heart. Hanzo has never kept his word as far as she knows, he swore not to kill Bi-Han and then did it anyways, he attacked Kuai Liang while the cryomancer was possessed and then left him to die slowly, nothing about him is exactly screaming "you can trust me" to her.

Based on the information she has, making peace with Hanzo is a bad idea! It will get Kuai Liang killed!

And she tells him that, but he isn't bothered by it, just tells her to have faith, that it will be okay, but she can't be calm bc He Could Die and then she'll be alone again and that terrifies her.

She is so scared that she stops thinking clearly, she's terrified at the prospect of losing the only person she has that actually cares about her so she lashes out. She tries to fix the problem the way she always did as a child in the fighting pits, by punching it until it dies or goes away.

She's panicking and traumatized and trying to protecting the only thing she cares about and she does something stupid! And it goes badly! That's a very human reaction!

And then Kuai Liang stops her, and he's angry with her for jeopardizing the peace so maybe he grounds her, or sends her away to her room so they can calm down and talk about it later bc he Knows why she reacted the way she did. He's upset and disappointed but he Understands and wants to work through it.

He's been trying to teach her throughout her apprenticeship that she doesn't have to lash out, that she isn't a dog and doesn't have to bite, she's just not fully there yet. So he sends her to her room, gives himself some space to calm down and figure out how to talk to her without making her. lash out again, bc clearly his reassurances didn't work.

Only she panics again.

The only person she cares about is, as far as she knows, angry with her and she doesn't know what to do with that, doesn't know how to cope with his disappointment. She's never cared what other people thought before, when all that mattered was surviving until tomorrow, but she does now and that terrifies her.

She's terrified that he will send her away for good, and she's even more scared of how much the idea of that happening bothers her.

So she packs her shit and leaves, doesn't leave a note or a message and just runs as far as she can to escape it, to go back to how she used to be bc at least that she understands.

And Kuai Liang is understandably panicked, bc that's his apprentice, that's his kid, even if he hasn't said it yet for fear of spooking her. And now she's just Gone. Vanished into the ether and He Can't Find Her. He ends up sending every Lin Kuei he can spare on the hunt to track her down, doesn't sleep or eat either unless he's forced to bc he thinks she's been kidnapped somehow, that something has happened to her.

She thinks she's being hunted so that she can be punished and he thinks she's been stolen and is in danger and its a mess for both of them.

idk, I just think that would have been a much better story than the one NRS gave us.