#tfw you take on a kinda-mentor role to a kid and then think she's dead for eight years

[kerra-and-company]

I keep trying to make a post about Cal and Gwen’s dynamic in GW1, and I can’t manage to phrase it in a way I like, but I’ll give it one more shot.

It’s meeting a stranger who’s much older than you, and thinking they’re cool, and them actually being cool (at least as far as you’re concerned). It’s being a kid and finding a hero, and imagining a future where you’re something like them. It’s having that potential future (and your mentor, and your mother, and your home) ripped away.

It’s meeting a kid whose enthusiasm makes you smile, who likes flowers like you, who wants to follow you everywhere (you make sure it’s never anywhere too dangerous). It’s not quite finding a sister, or someone you want to parent, but still someone whose future you want to ensure, if you can. It’s waving to her five minutes before the city you’re in is set on fire.

It’s meeting again, eight years later, and you’re changed (you’re angry, you’re determined) and you’re changed (you’re exhausted, you’re trying), and you each thought the other was dead. It’s trying to rebuild a bond that’s in tatters.

It’s an example you can no longer follow, someone who’s been through their own versions of hell and still takes chances on love over and over, and you want to follow that example but you’re scared and you can’t be hurt again.

It’s stumbling and falling to figure out how to help, how much to temper and how much to comfort and how much to leave alone. It’s wondering if that help is wanted, if you’re wanted, if it would be better for her if you were strangers again.

It’s a future and a friendship, someday, carved from a broken stone wall.