Even In The Grave, All Is Not Lost

This Is A Gift

A/N: hey guys, I hope you're all well and safe after everything that's been happening. Thought you might need a little something to cheer you up.

...

"Even when you'd lost everything you thought there was to lose, somebody came along and gave you something for free."
― Jenny Valentine, Broken Soup

...

After Murphy finally fucked off, Raven reluctantly admitted defeat and returned to the lab. She'd been away long enough. If her raging libido couldn't find a way to cool its shit, that was on her.

She could handle it.

If she could handle monstrous levels of pain on a daily basis, she could handle a little bothersome arousal here and there.

And, as much as Raven hated to admit it, she kind of missed Luna's company.

Which was unfortunate.

She was still in the lab when Raven entered, only now she had migrated to one of the tables, dismissing all chairs on offer in order to perch upon it.

Very catlike.

Raven grumbled beneath her breath, remembering what Murphy had said.

"What are you doing?" she asked, curiosity rising to the surface as she took in the piles of different colored string beside her.

Luna looked up, mouth curving at the edges when she saw her. "Waiting for you."

Well, that was-

For God's sake, Reyes, don't you fucking cry!

Her hormones really were out of whack lately. She blamed the seizures. And, you know, the homicidal code currently having a party in her brain.

"No, but, what are you doing?" she asked, eyeing the piles of string once more, albeit somewhat warily.

Luna spared them a cursory glance. "Trying to stay occupied. Emori was here earlier, we were exchanging patterns and weaving techniques."

"Exchanging what?"

Luna smiled and held up the item she was working on. It was a length of different colored strings and at the bottom, some of them had been spun into a series of patterns. "Jewelry. Different clans have different techniques and Emori was cast out from hers very young but she's seen a lot in her travels, including different ways of making these." She shrugged, lowering what Raven thought might be the beginnings of a bracelet once more. "There's not really anything else to do in here."

No, there wasn't. Maybe she could bully Murphy into lending Luna his toy robot. She'd probably find it fascinating, or at the very least entertaining. She seemed to have an appreciation for most things, whatever they were, and Raven didn't think a pet robot could escape that. "Yeah."

Scanning the table, she noticed that the piles of blue and green string were, unsurprisingly, the largest.

You can take the girl out of the ocean. . .

"Where did you get all this?" Raven wondered, surveying the collection of brightly colored materials. Did Becca's lab have an Arts and Crafts level too?

"Adria's bag," Luna murmured, separating the purple and red piles that had started to stray into each other's territories. "The one she brought with her from the oil rig. It was full of twine, beads and dyes. Far too many shells. That was all she packed." Luna smiled to herself. "She loves to make things." The smile faltered as they both caught the use of the present tense before Luna took a breath and moved past it. "She wouldn't have wanted the materials to waste away into nothing."