#vanleo

he came to her book reading, awkward and overly familiar, unsettling but somehow still this easy beacon of kindness she's never experienced before. the positive-thinking advice she scoffs at from her therapist sounds so much more appealing coming from a guy who looks at her like he needs her to love herself-- he sees them like twin souls, like they read each others' futures, like if he can fix her then maybe it means he's not broken beyond repair. there's no ulterior motive this time; he just... needs her. they're the same. she needs him.

they've become incredibly codependent, especially so on vanya's end, because she vocally believes she can never get anyone else and has no reason to want anyone else, and he enables that idea. not cruelly, but just, he really doesn't think anyone else would Get Him, doesn't trust anyone, knows hardly anyone else would tolerate his past. she knows and accepts that he killed his father; in a sick way she's a bit enchanted by it. deeply buried violent fantasies, wishing she were bold enough to ever act dramatically on her baggage. he might conceal the fact that he still has his fucked up effigies of her siblings but she knows how he was achingly jealous of them, pinned his every hope and dream on getting to be one of them. it doesn't ring any alarms for her, because it's painfully familiar.

that's how the isolation works-- their 'venting' about the academy is too frequent, too key to their bonding, extends past unpacking troublesome feelings and builds into creating new excuses to keep hating them. they really are still sharp with her because of the book, because of habit, but she also overreacts to imagined slights, takes everything in the worst possible light, comes roaring back after a genuinely positive interaction to claim it was actually underhanded and nasty. she can't trust them. she can't recognize the slightest kindness as anything but a trap, anymore.

leonard is never sharp or belittling with her directly but the sheer level of 'us against the world' he espouses-- partly out of genuine personal paranoia, partly out of refusing to ever let his childhood resentment fade-- makes her feel justified in being incredibly anxious, as if any given stranger might have the same cruel attitude her siblings supposedly do, so she's still mousy and anxious and it's just easiest to only let her guard down with leonard, be genuinely bright and bold for him in little flashes, when it's just the two of them and she forgets about the cruel looming (imaginary) specter of Everyone Else. she loves him, for real, he loves her too.

the red flags are subtler and more real; the way the others try to reach out is more grounded and earnest. allison asks, tactlessly, "don't you have other friends?" and vanya says "nobody else likes me" so earnestly, and allison's heart lurches sickly because she knows how that feels.

"i was alone," vanya says over and over and over to five, when he has the audacity to just come back and look at her like that. soft, fond-- it feels condescending. she can't help guilt-tripping when she's fraying at the edges, when every sound is painfully loud. five says "so was i" and tries to load all the necessary weight into such small words but she's deaf to it. "at least there was an excuse, for you. at least everyone was dead. it wasn't because there's something wrong with you."