The surprise is clear on Vanya's face when Grace sits down. She can't remember that happening, not once in all those long years through their childhood. And the surprise just grows, though - of all their family, Mom is the only one Vanya believes outright when she says she would have come to see her perform.
(That pit of anger flares dangerously in her stomach, but Dad is dead and gone and she already tore this house apart once. Klaus is the only one who can reach him now.)
When Grace stretches her hand across the table, Vanya stares at it a moment, childish uncertainty at war with her own internal reminder that she's an adult, they all had bad childhoods but she's an adult and she doesn't have to feel like crying just because her mom is paying attention to her again. But god does she want to.
V reaches bot hands out, nudging her plat to the side so her elbows don't land on a pancake that she's too touched by to eat, at least right now. Both hands wrap around Grace's, because right now it is easier to accept this, to ignore the harder murmurs in the back of her head telling her that she doesn't need this now, but if she takes that hand it will be yanked away when she does. Vanya doesn't want to believe that. It gets a little harder when the book is mentioned. She almost cringes.
"What did you think?"
It had been a take down book before take down culture grew like a disease online. It was the only way she knew to vent, to divulge every awful detail she remembered, dredge up the past in the hopes that it would finally leave her.
It didn't, of course. it might as well be tattooed on her in place of the Academy's symbol. Grace, at least, she only discussed in raw moments, brushing past the birth mother she never new to describe Grace as the mother that gave them the only emotional stability the Hargreeves kids would have - and she was a robot. Vanya hopes it didn't offend her like it did the others, but she knows little about that book was kind.
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(That pit of anger flares dangerously in her stomach, but Dad is dead and gone and she already tore this house apart once. Klaus is the only one who can reach him now.)
When Grace stretches her hand across the table, Vanya stares at it a moment, childish uncertainty at war with her own internal reminder that she's an adult, they all had bad childhoods but she's an adult and she doesn't have to feel like crying just because her mom is paying attention to her again. But god does she want to.
V reaches bot hands out, nudging her plat to the side so her elbows don't land on a pancake that she's too touched by to eat, at least right now. Both hands wrap around Grace's, because right now it is easier to accept this, to ignore the harder murmurs in the back of her head telling her that she doesn't need this now, but if she takes that hand it will be yanked away when she does. Vanya doesn't want to believe that. It gets a little harder when the book is mentioned. She almost cringes.
"What did you think?"
It had been a take down book before take down culture grew like a disease online. It was the only way she knew to vent, to divulge every awful detail she remembered, dredge up the past in the hopes that it would finally leave her.
It didn't, of course. it might as well be tattooed on her in place of the Academy's symbol. Grace, at least, she only discussed in raw moments, brushing past the birth mother she never new to describe Grace as the mother that gave them the only emotional stability the Hargreeves kids would have - and she was a robot. Vanya hopes it didn't offend her like it did the others, but she knows little about that book was kind.