[it's wrong. it's so, so wrong to hear her talking this way.

she's... shattering, isn't she? what laphicet wanted to do would take away her agency. it would take away the healing she's done and the progress she's made. it would leave her without the life and friends, without the experiences she had and the memories.

laphicet selfishly wanted to take everything away from magilou and everyone else for velvet's sake, and that's so unbelievably fucked up that he wants to do that. it sounds like the thing a shitty adult would do, not a kid—but maybe that was the crowd he came from.

akira's not sure.

but what he's absolutely sure of is that no matter how much it makes his blood boil, it's not about him. it's about magilou. it's about magilou slumped at his feet, laughing in the most humorless, despairing way he could have ever heard. he can't... he can't sit here and just let this happen. not like this.

so akira shifts around so that he's in front of her, crouching down and not hesitating to wrap her in a hug.]

I don't need a performance from the Menagerie tonight. [he pulls her a little closer.] You don't have to smile, or laugh, or treat it like it's funny.

[it's not funny, it's not funny at all to see her like this. it... makes his own chest hurt a little, because he knows that she's struggling and he's not sure he can really pull her from this on her own. for all that she's opened up to him, for all that this is pretty open—

watching the potential for not just her world or her own life as she lives and breathes to collapse, but for it to exist in a way that negates everything she's come to know, that's just too damn much.

(what the fuck, laphicet, honestly.)]