#valorousimperial

The moon is full and huge and Kankri, before he had his ancestral molt, stands outside with Mituna and Delphine. Your mom looks as beautiful as ever, toweringly tall. She still has her back fin, and her dress is black with iridescence that caught pink and purple when she moved. Mituna's wearing a suit.

The palace doesn't all fit in the frame, a thing of finery with huge, curtained windows, a sprawling natural garden, wide paths and pavilions, and they're walking around the front of the place, talking about Kankri's passion for architecture, how he'd designed the place.

You should have been there. You remember the night, because you'd ducked out on purpose to spend it with Terezi and Adhafera. Sollux had elected to stay home.

When Mituna smiles into the camera and you get a glance of Sollux's observatory bedroom, his lusus taking a nap outside, you lose your composure, and fling the remote into the screen with a pitchy screech, with no regard for the hour or the other hotel guests who are definitely sleeping. It goes right through and shatters against the wall. It's off now.

Throwing yourself down in your fit breaks the beautiful bed, but you pay it no mind as you fist the blankets to your mouth and heave your body, screaming and tearing them with your teeth as hot tears pour down your face and stain the sheets red.

It's impossible to stop once you've started, and you thrash and throw things and tear into whatever you can lay your hands to and rage against the world that took your home, took your safe place, broke you and hurt you and hurt the people you love.

A hotel attendant comes to the door because of the complaints, and the sound you let out is so unholy that you know that they're going to call the police.

You throw your fit and wail at the cold unfairness of it all until the police come, when you're just starting to calm down.

The room is trashed, your voice is gone, your face is red, and you've been crying so hard your eyes are nearly swollen shut. There's going to be hell to pay, not to mention the bill for this room, but the shock of it being you that opens the door, already mumbling your apologies, is probably what keeps you out of jail that night. You can't stay in the hotel, though.

The police sit with you while you call the hospital. They say Kankri's acting similarly, and they should keep an eye on you.

They give you a ride the seven blocks to where you were just dismissed from care.