Chapter Text
Nico
For Nico, her family is small. Not the hundreds of cousins she has scattered throughout Japan and L.A, or the grand mother who used to scream at her whe she came out as bi. Not her parents, frowning when she comes home with a bleeding lip and a black eye from a fight.
No, Nico's family is a purple-haired feminist and a blond football player, cuddling on the broken couch as they watch stupid comedies and said their dinosaur was their favorite sibling.
Nico's family is two aliens, head-over-heels in love with each other, that danced at night to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds when they thought no one was listening.
Nico's family is two little girls that saved up for months to buy her a cake on her birthday, and ran around with capes on their back and flower crowns on their heads.
Nico's family is a wise-cracking boy who never took off his head phones and never planned on it.
And yeah, they fought over the TV remote and never did agree on which Star Wars movie was the best, and Nico as often woke up to her youngest sister's screams about a man they left a hundred years in the past, or her brother's yells of his girlfriend being lost in a fire only to be woken up to said girlfriend grabbing his face and begging him to come back, because Chase, I'm fine, look at me i'm right here.
But, she realized, watching Xavin and Kar smash each other's faces with cake on their first anniversary or seeing Molly smiling ear to ear when she opened Nico's gift on Christmas, she would't trade this for the world.
Chase
Chase's family had consistented of himself, and only himself, for as long as he could remember. His parents beat him, his uncle died, he had no siblings. So he looked out for himself.
It grew in little ways. First to become his family was Gert, the first time they kissed and Chase realized that he would not let anyone touch Gertrude Yorkes or they would face him.
Then Molly, when she woke Chase up early on his birthday (not normally a celebrated affair) and gave him a card she drew, which depicted him burning a monster while she beat up another one.
Then Nico, Kar, and Xavin, when they grabbed his arms in the middle of a nightmare and shook him awake.
(Nico was most worried, because Chase Stien don't you dare go out on me, dammit, you aren't allowed!)
Vic when he got his circuts to play a football game because Chase had broken arms and couldn't eve get near the TV.
Klara, when she grew him a flower crown and proliamed him Prince of the Kingdom.
And Chase realized, even if he hated the family he had been born to, that didn't mean he couldn't have a family in his own right.
Karolina
Karolina had a family. Her parents, her parent's oldest friends that she called her Aunts and Uncles, her school friends.
But the second her skin danced rainbow, it changed.
Her school friends didn't understand ("Freak," they'd call her, or worse, "Gay," and Kar hated the slurs that were thrown at her like snowballs.)
Her parents were dead, and her Aunts and Uncles wouldn't look at her.
But she had her spouse, who's skin changed with the tides of the moon and called her their beloved.
She had Nico, and Gert, her sisters and best friends, and Molly and Klara, who became like daughters.
She had Chase, her idiotic big brother that stopped using slurs the second Kar told him she was gay.
She had Vic, her little brother that listened to the Beatles with her when the others weren't around.
And, really, Karolia prefered this family more than the snobby school kids who wouldn't even start to try to accept her.
Molly
Molly had a family. She loved them, too, more than anything. Her mommy and daddy, who gave her a kiss every morning when they left for work, and her aunts and uncles that gave her the coolest gifts on her birthday. And Molly wouldn't trade it for the world.
But when Nico told her her parents had killed someone and they had to run away, Molly trusted her.
It;s not like she didn't miss her parents. But Kar and Gert and Nico taught her about women's rights, and Xav told the best bed time stories about the Skrulls and Krees, and Chase got her a cupcake on her birthday and smashed it in her face. Vic got her the best kind of cereal and watched shows with her, and Klara was her best friend in the world.
This family, Molly decided, wasn't that bad.