#immavampirekiwi

“No, it’s not.”

It absolutely is, and Charles knows it, and by the look on her face, Riley clearly knows it too. Her innocent expression cracks pretty quickly, and she can’t help the little smile.

She holds up the book in her hand, one of the ones he’s having her read as part of home schooling. Between her physical mutation and her shrinking desire to live with her wings crushed against her back and the fact she could be dragged back to Kentucky if she’s found because she’s technically a runaway until she can convince a judge to emancipate her, it’s not like she can go to regular school. But she still needs to get a high school diploma -- or a GED or whatever -- so Charles is helping.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since Erik got her to admit that no, she actually didn’t manage to graduate super early, but she already feels like she’s learned more than she ever did back at home. Her old home. This is home now.

“I actually like this one,” she explains. She shows him the cover, and it’s Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. There’s a few sheets of paper on the coffee table that she’s been using to take notes so she can talk about the story with him later.

“I’m almost done. And there’s this part that, hold on,” she turns back through the book, leaving her index finger on the page where she’s currently reading, and she reads aloud once she finds the passage she’s looking for.

“When someone is searching then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search. Searching means: having a goal. Finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

Riley looks up at Charles. “I like that part.” She smiles, and it still feels awkward on her face, but she means it.

She doesn‘t say it because she thinks it sounds weird and she’s trying really hard to be a good student and not ask stupid questions or say stupid things. But she thinks she was a finder when she left home and that’s how she ended up here. She didn’t have any plan beyond get out of Kentucky and get as far away from Harlan as possible. She took a break that day she met Erik because she wasn’t going somewhere, she didn’t have anywhere she needed to be, so she pulled over and went flying for the first time.

If she had been searching for a new life, she would have been intent on reaching a big city and getting someone to hire a minor and pay her under the table until she was eighteen and no one could come looking for her. She would have been making a plan to convince someone to rent an apartment to a sixteen year old girl because she only had her driver’s license and not a fake ID that said she was eighteen.

But she hadn’t been a searcher. She had been a finder, which led her here. To Erik, who she calls dad in the privacy of her head. He bandaged her torn wing and offered her a home. To Charles, who had not hesitated to welcome her. To Ororo, who agreed to share her bedroom with a stranger, even if she was unhappy about it at the state. To Vivian and Gwen. To Peter. To X. To this moment, Charles chiding her for being downstairs past her bedtime.

It would sound weird to say all that. She probably would mess it up, too, the words would get all jumbled as they come out because her brain is thinking them too fast and her mouth can’t keep up. And there’s always the chance that Erik is the only one who thinks of her as a member of his family, no matter how nice Charles is and how much Ororo and Vivian have come around to the idea.

Gwen is little enough that she wanted another sister because she loved her two actual sisters so much. And maybe it’s because he’s the only boy, but if Peter didn’t want her around at first, she hadn’t been able to notice it.

She has been meticulously avoiding X as much as possible. He didn’t want her here at all, and he’s one of the adults, so she thinks he would be able to convince Erik and Charles if he decided she needed to go. She knows it’s better to keep your head down and stay out of the way and resist the urge to rock the boat hard enough to know how much it can take before it capsizes.

Yeah. It would be weird to try to explain all of that, and she doesn’t want to make trouble and rat out people for not being the most hospitable housemates when she first arrived.

So she just shrugs. “I just think it is a cool way to show how there’s a difference between looking for something specific and being open to things that come your way. The writing is really good.” She shrugs again and sits up properly, folding the sheets of paper with her notes and sticking them in the book as a makeshift bookmark.

“I lost track of time. I’m sorry. I’ll go to bed.” She gets up and rubs at her tired eyes, leaning over to turn the light off. “Um, I think I can get my math homework done tomorrow so we can go over it tomorrow night. If you’re not busy. It’s just math, though, so it’s fine if you’re busy or what,” she hastens to say. “I can check it myself and figure out what I did wrong.”

She frowns at her own anxiety and scuffs her socked ankle against the carpet. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Night, Charles.”

Tagged by @good7luck to list 10 favorite characters from different fandoms, so here we go:

1) Link from The Legend of Zelda 2) Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

3) Ayano Tateyama from Kagerou Project

The cottage is peaceful early in the morning. It’s never bad any time of the day, but there’s at least eight people around all the time -- Charles, Erik, X, Vivian, Ororo, Peter, Gwen, and her -- so it can get busy. Even a little chaotic, but not a bad kind. Just the kind with eight people in a single living space.

But it’s quiet when no one’s up, when it’s just her. Sometimes she needs the quiet. Going from being alone to having three adult figures and three sisters and a brother was hard. Sometimes she wants to remember she can still be alone.

But sometimes the peace and early morning light are welcome reprieves from darkness and the company of the echoes in her head. The soft blue light that filters through the windows and curtains is soft like hope after a sleepless night. She closes the door carefully behind her so she doesn’t wake Ororo up and tiptoes down the stairs in sock feet. It’s early, but at least it’s light out. It’s not so strange that she would be awake.

Turns out she’s not the only, and it surprises her to see Charles in the kitchen. But she smiles back when he smiles first. “Good morning,” she says with a tiny wave as she goes to the cupboard for a mug. She doesn’t ask before she takes the rest of the hot water from the kettle to pour over her tea bag.

It doesn’t make her as nervous anymore.

As she sits at the counter, she thinks that there’s a lot of things she likes about Charles. He’s smart. He makes Erik and X happy. He makes her siblings happy. He answers questions and never makes her feel dumb for asking. He’s just really nice.

But she likes that when she has a bad night, whether he can tell by mutation or paternal instinct or simple observation, he doesn’t ask. Like today. He doesn’t ask, just smiles at her and rests a gentle, warm hand on the back of hers before leaving to start his day.

She flexes her fingers and thinks, okay, maybe she can manage a nap today.

Riley -- does not know what to do with that.

Her whole life, she’s been at other people’s mercy. Every day. And some of that is just part of being a kid. Kids don’t get to say when they go to school. They don’t get to decide where they live or when they eat dinner or when they go to bed. But then there’s the stuff that isn’t just part of being a kid. The stuff that gives her nightmares and moments of blinding anxiety when she has to go hide in a closet to calm down.

And Riley has only ever made one big choice of her own, and sometimes, she feels like that used up all of her ability to decide things. It’s easier to let other people decide -- she knows how to live under someone else’s power. So, the last couple of weeks staying here at Erik and Charles’ home has been weird. They let her make a lot of decisions. She’s not used to that.

Ooh fun~

Name: Linda Drake (see here)

Gender: Cis female

General Appearance: Basically like a young Kara, but with dark hair.  So probably something like her mother’s civilian disguise as a teen (glasses and ponytail possibly included).

Personality: A bit shy and geeky.  She doesn’t have the same confidence as either of her parents, thinking she won’t be able to live up to their legacy.  She takes more after Tim’s nerdy side, and basically doesn’t even have to try to seem like an awkward, unassuming dweeb in public.

Special Talents: I think she takes a while to come into her superpowers, although she displays brilliant intelligence from a young age.  She takes pride in using her smarts over strength to solve problems, although she does eventually inherit most of her mother’s abilities.  I also like the idea that she develops wings of flame and flame vision, reflecting her father’s origins as well.  Perhaps her superhero name would be “Red Angel”?  (”Flamebird” could also work, since it’s been used by both Bats and Kryptonians apparently, Kara included.)Who they like better: I think she would actually take to Tim more, since her mother can be a bit overbearing (or overexcited, more like), especially when it comes to carrying on her Kryptonian roots.  She fears her mom will be disappointed in her if she doesn’t become a full-fledged superhero/powered-being like her, even though that’s obviously not the case.  Kara has a hard time showing that/containing her eagerness for her daughter to follow in her footsteps though, so Tim usually has to reel her in and help convince Linda that they’ll love her no matter what.  He knows what it’s like to be just a normal human trying to attain impossible expectations, and so is usually the one to comfort her when she fails to achieve those levels.

Who they take after more: Again, she leans more towards Tim’s intellectualism, since she thinks if she can’t be super-strong like her mum she should at least study hard and become smart enough to make up for it.

Personal Headcanon: She loves her whole extended family, but visiting Aunt Barbara especially, since they’re both also bookworms.