Victoria had lived her life under her mother and father's watchful eyes. When med school made it necessary for her to have her own apartment, she had nearly jumped for joy right there in front of her parents.

Okay, she loved her parents. She did. She did her best to be a good daughter who diligently followed the path that her second-genration immigrant parents had worked so hard to lay out for her. To do what was right for them.

But... even she had her limits. The constant nagging, the constant going through or taking her phone because she needed to study harder? She'd learned to live without it almost immediately, and thus grown up as the weird girl without a phone. She wasn't ballsy enough to buy a burner phone. She knew her mother would kill her if she found it. So, she literally hadn't gotten a phone that was private until she was sixteen years old and living away from her parents for med school.

She still felt the need to hide things from her parents. Her friends, the people she was spending time with. She'd turned off her location tracker on her phone. Six angry phone calls later, her mother let it be.

Being alone after living such a sheltered life was... rough, at first. The walls were thin. She'd had to listen to neighbors who were always either fighting or... passionately making up. But it was hers. When things didn't work, or she needed someone at her side, however, she didn't call her mother. No. She called her attending.

She couldn't help it.

You'd been the first to take her under your wing after her Crash incident. The first to treat her like she could stand on her own two feet without falling over like some kind of newborn. She loved that about you. She loved that you treated her like someone worth respect, because people learned her age and, suddenly, she was being babied against her will.

You were the kind of person to watch first, and when someone was done, give their feedback. You weren't the kind of person yo tell someone who knew what they were doing what to do next. She had learned a lot from you. And... acquired several petnames from you, all vaguely maternal in nature.

She... didn't really want to think about what that meant. One crisis at a time.

So, she held your sleeve one evening as you were leaving. "Hey. Can I- I mean... I need your help with a recipe. Can you come over?" Can you stay forever? She wanted to say it. But she knew better.