Starsin has never been a particularly soft mother—not prone to sweetness and gentleness—but Alita has never needed that anyway. She has needed her strength and the clear-eyed vision she had when she looked at a world of muddled grey. She had needed the strong shoulders that bore the weight of it all; who stood up to the torrent of the rain and never one bending before it. Who never compromised.
But that doesn’t mean she does not blossom beneath the attention now.
Something of the child within her is greedy for the affection and she gladly folds into her mother’s chest, lets her fuss over her. She closes her golden eyes and presses her forehead into her mother’s neck, letting the feel of her mother and the scent of her sink into her so that she can cherish it forever.
“I’m okay,” she says and although tears of relief spring to her eyes, she doesn’t try to brush them off. “I was so scared that something had happened to you.” She doesn’t know what she would have done if she had woken cup to a world without Starsin—a world without her father or her adopted brothers. It is the only stable thing that she has ever known; she cannot imagine what it would be like if it got ripped away.
The moment doesn’t last forever though. Eventually, Starsin steps back from the embrace and brushes her hair back. She lifts her chin up so that she can look at her mother, obedient and quiet, her draconic wings folding by her sides, her halo angled just slightly above her head. “I haven’t seen anyone,” she whispers sadly, knowing how disappointed her mother would be to hear it. “I can keep looking though.” She takes a step back, her wings flaring just slightly at her sides. “Do you want me to go find them?”
Alita
@[Starsin]