Humans had a tendency to search for people that reminded them of their parents when it came to loving someone. But what about the poor girls being raised under the hand of someone that didn't believe in a gentle upbringing. Someone they had to change for good while being too young to understand the consequences but forced to be old enough to try and survive.

They'd look for others that reminded them of someone else they were close to, sometimes it was the other soung girl they had lost after growing up every step of the way. So had Arlecchino, unconsciously. She had noticed similar behavior in you, ways her best friend of years had acted around her that were like a perfect mirror image of her in you. But she knew to differentiate you two. She loved you for you, not for her.

Still years of unresolved trauma due to her own hand and need for survival that had never been spoken about again, all while raising kids and making sure she didn't act the same was enough for her brain to shortcut sometimes, no matter how composed she was.

It was another one of these moments. Stressful, uncoordinated and everything that could go wrong happening, kids demanding things left and right. Finally getting a second to at least look at the papers that had been put onto her desk earlier, not even sitting down as her eyes quickly hushed over them.

You stood in the doorframe, asking something just as you passed by to return some things to one of the kids room. Maybe your voice was a pitch too high, maybe it was the situation in itself, hushing by as if playing hide and seek.

Enough for her brain to short circuit completely, eyes focused on the page below her. The silence after enough to hear a pin drop. "I'll come in a minute Clervie.."