#benni

more S2 funny faces/poses 😂

Irma’s office had once belonged to Al at Monroe Fashions, though “belonged” was generous. He’d treated it like a decorative afterthought, a place to abandon paperwork while he haunted the workrooms and design floors where the real magic happened. Irma, practical as ever, claimed it without ceremony. On paper, Alphonse Monroe ran the business. In practice, Irma Tempest kept its pulse steady so he could dream without the building catching fire.

Now she sat behind the desk, posture immaculate, fingers steepled, watching Al unravel into a stream of anxious words about Benni and Stan. His voice filled the room, quick and fraying at the edges.

She lifted a single finger.

Silence dropped instantly. Even the air seemed to behave.

“Benni sees Stan’s transformation into a better person as a kind of insult,” Irma said, her tone level, precise. “They were a child. Parents are supposed to love and care for their children. That isn’t a lofty ideal, Al. It’s the bare minimum. So when they see that he can change, it forces a much uglier thought to the surface, that he was always capable of being better… and simply chose not to be when they needed him most.”

The words settled heavily, like dust that refused to be brushed away.

Alphonse exhaled and drifted toward the window, teacup in hand, the city stretching out below him in indifferent lines of light. He stared out as if the answer might be written somewhere between the buildings.

“I understand that, Irma. I do,” he said, quieter now. “But how am I supposed to explain Stan’s past to them? His first real love, his children… slaughtered by humans. And not after he failed them, but after he fought—truly fought—against his own kind to keep them safe. It broke something fundamental in him. After that, he didn’t just grieve. He curdled. He became cruel, hollowed out, convinced he was incapable of love, unworthy of it. For centuries.”

He paused, thumb tracing the rim of his teacup.

“And that’s not even touching the rest of it. The torture. The manipulation. People taking his pain and reshaping it into something they had the audacity to call love. Even with me…” A faint, humorless smile flickered. “For a long time, I wasn’t anything more than a convenience. A source of comfort. It took everything I had to carve out something real in him. Something that could last.”

Irma didn’t soften.

“I don’t think Benni gives a fuck about any of that, Al,” she said plainly. “And frankly, they shouldn’t have to. They didn’t enter this world cushioned by tragedy they could contextualize. They were born straight into the aftermath of it.”

She leaned back slightly, gaze unwavering.

“You didn’t even know they were your child. Stan never told you. You had to piece that truth together yourself like a detective with half the evidence burned. And yes, you tried. You stepped in as ‘Uncle Al,’ brought them joy, protected them where you could. That mattered.”

A small pause. Not gentle, but deliberate.

“But you couldn’t rewrite what they learned early on. That they weren’t worth staying for. That love was conditional, inconsistent, or absent altogether. And if I’m being fair… your love doesn’t always land the way you think it does. It’s bright, it’s generous, but it’s also… polished. Sweetened. It can feel like you’re trying to fix their emotions instead of letting them exist.”

Alphonse turned from the window, something wounded flickering across his face.

“…So you’re saying I can’t fix this? That I’m somehow incapable of helping Benni understand—”

“It isn’t your mess to fix,” Irma cut in, clean as a blade. “This is between Stan and Benni. Their relationship, their damage, their repair. Every time you step in to defend Stan, you’re not helping. You’re driving the wedge deeper, reinforcing the idea that their pain comes second to his redemption.”

She tilted her head slightly, expression sharpening.

“You also have a tendency,” she continued, “to come across like some desperate housewife utterly devoted to a man who can do no wrong simply because you love him. It’s not endearing. It’s annoying.”

The room went still again.

“Benni is supposed to be a Being of Balance,” Irma went on, quieter now but no less firm. “Or at least, they’re meant to become one. That means they have to navigate this themselves, define what balance even means while dragging around the weight of being the child of two ancient, catastrophically flawed beings. You and Stan know too much about the world… and somehow not enough where it matters.”

Her gaze flicked briefly to the window, then back to Al.

“Time does strange things to people like us. It layers pain until it dulls, blurs, becomes indistinguishable from everything else. You forget what it feels like when it’s sharp. Immediate.”

A faint, dry edge slipped into her voice.

“That’s why Benni doesn’t just lash out in small, harmless ways. They don’t spritz you with water like a misbehaving cat.”

A beat.

“They pick up a crossbow.”

@samovar225

That one post you made inspired me to make this ^^