Chapter Text
Wendy thinks a lot about family when the dust settles.
She thinks about what things were before, not before this disaster but before that disaster, when one day her mother didn’t come home and she was the woman of the house. She thinks about how she didn’t know what being the ‘woman’ of the house meant, she wasn’t even sure she knew what being a woman meant. Her mother must have told her years ago, days ago, hours ago, before she was gone for good.
Wendy knows how to punch, how to fight, how to hold things back, but not how to be warm, or how to be soft, and wasn’t that what a woman was?
So that disaster, she’s pretty sure it ruined the woman she was supposed to be. Her brothers were far too young to remember, it made things easier for them. You couldn’t really miss what you never had, not like her. She missed what she used to have every day.
So that disaster redefined family, because suddenly her daddy was her dad, and suddenly her mom was a corpse and suddenly she was her mom and the oldest and she had to be soft and hard and everything in between. So that disaster took a bite out of warmth and left them all drafty. So it showed her the sort of person she needed to be to survive.
So that disaster made her tired, made her angry, made her push down all the things she was into an ugly mess. So that disaster made her hate her dad a little bit each holiday, each time he’d take to teaching them how to hunt/fight/survive rather than letting them bask in something warm for once. So that disaster taught her family was a burden, a struggle, something to harden yourself for so you could be what they needed you to be.
-- their faces were grey on the screen, and for a minute she thought how weird was this, how did Shaundra Whoever with her crew of whoever manage this and how did a person even become stone and how did her father let this happen when all he ever taught them to do was survive and how could she have not been cool hard strong enough to stop this and how --
So this disaster changed everything again, she thinks. Her whole body hurts, especially where her father and family squeezed her tight when they weren’t so grey anymore, and she’s too coolhardstrong to let it bother her but maybe it does, maybe a little. Out there in the wastes, what was the town and became the wastes and was the town again, out there she didn’t flinch because it was a waste of a few seconds. She crawled up from the wreckage of a car and Soos was there and warm worried soft like he always was. Dipper was small and trying to stand tall and he looked at her, looks at her, like she was so cool and hard and strong and maybe she does like it, maybe it’s not so bitter, maybe he was right.
She sees her father again now, the softness in how he holds them looks at them touches them. She thinks about a young man with a young family, afraid of losing anyone else. She thinks of that young man doing everything to make sure they’re ready, safe, prepared for what life will throw because he wasn’t there for her and he can’t always be there for them and maybe, just maybe, maybe if he can teach them how they’ll be alright.
She thinks ‘maybe this is growing up.’ She thinks ‘maybe he was right but it was still bullshit.’ She thinks ‘maybe he was wrong but he did his best, didn’t he?’
She thinks maybe his best was enough, and her best was enough. She thinks next thanksgiving she’s putting her foot down and they’re having a real meal in the warmth of their home. She thinks maybe the family tradition of hunting down the turkey can stay, though.