That day and some of the next consisted of trying to make her feel better, or at the very least, just to venture out of her room and take her mind off the subject. They all failed, but they tried. Lucky could see none of the ones who made an effort had actually ever done the likes of this before.

Even if they had, they sucked.

Everything they said only served to make Red draw more into the shell that hadn't been there before. Still, the Phantom Troupe tried, which was more than he'd expected to come from criminals. He supposed even they were still human at their core.

The blonde with muscles and a surprising lack of eyebrows came with a tray of food, trying to get her to eat. He teased her relentlessly to get her to move from her spot, mocking her height, hair... but he hadn't gotten a response.

Pinky sat beside her in silence for a while, and left as soon as she'd come, not knowing what to say or do.

Devil pushed past his own wobbly smile and tried to strike up a normal conversation, which quickly turned into a desperate, one-sided speech.

A short man with only one visible eyeball entered with a sack and dumped it to the ground, spilling all kinds of pebbles, rocks, and minerals to the ground. "See? This one looks like your lucky rock, doesn't it?" "What about this one? It has some aura, like your rock." "Or this? It has some quartz mixed in, just like your other one—" He too, had gotten no positive response. He'd left the rocks with her, grouping them within arm's distance before departing.

Emo Loser took the effort to walk in and told her to stop crying because she looked "pathetic", a tactic which obviously backfired. After this last terrible attempt, they stopped. They just let her be, not knowing how to deal with the situation at hand and leaving her alone.

With a curt nod to himself, Lucky wandered off into the building. Everyone dealt with loss differently, and everyone comforted others in different ways. But if none of the Troupe's methods were working, it was time for his turn. He had to try. Red needed some alone time, but she couldn't be by herself forever. Though it felt nice, it wouldn't help. She'd bottled up the intensest of her feelings, and was struggling to deal with them as they were frantically trying to come spilling out now in a rapid whirlpool. Red needed support, and as much as the Phantom Troupe members seemed to try, their attempts weren't going to cut it, not at this rate.

Lucky knew who he had to go see.

*     *     *

"Pinky!" Lucky knocked on the door frame. Or rather, he tried to, because his knuckles missed and he ended up stumbling into the room uninvited, earning him a cold glare that only Machi could give. He laughed sheepishly before rapidly pushing out a small "sorry".

Her eyebrow twitched, displeased at the intrusion. First messing with their Ten, then the incident on the airship, now just being a bumbling fool. Couldn't he do anything right? "What?"

"I... right." He straightened himself as much as he could, taking care not to hit his head on the lower part of the slanted concrete ceiling. He verbally cursed his height.

"Yes?" she prodded, tone dull. "Did you want anything?"

"Pinky. I... I need a favor. Do you have any spare threads I can use?" He paused to think. "Preferably thicker strands, maybe embroidering thread thickness. That aren't Nen and won't kill anyone or slice them up if they touch them. And are in color..." He nodded as he spoke, obviously making up all these requests on the fly. "Yeah. Lots of colors."

Her eyes narrowed, doubtful. "For what?"

*     *     *

Lucky strolled into the room casually and plopped down a ways away from the girl, dumping an explosive rainbow of different colored threads on the ground next to him. Leaning against the wall, he cast a sideways glance towards her. "Hey, Red."

Rein didn't look up.

Lucky exhaled, looking up the the ceiling. Ever so slowly, he slid over her way, inching and inching, then stopping to see if she noticed or cared. Than inched and inched some more, until finally, he was at a reasonable distance, enough for one other person to fit snugly in between them. Reaching over, he slid the strings closer as well.

He stared at the girl intently, and whenever her head shifted, snapped his gaze away as if being caught. He hoped his over-dramatic-ness would help the sorrow ease up.

After several minutes of this, Rein finally spoke. "What..." Her voice was creaky, like the aged hinges of a dungeon door. She cleared her throat. "...what do you want?"

Lucky shrugged. Rein looked up and he met her eyes and... Lucky sucked in a breath.

True to the nickname he'd given her, Red was... red. Her bottom lip was wet and raw from repeated biting, and her eyes, though duller, were a drowning scarlet. But her expressions were numb, her reactions suppressed as if she was only a walking doll.

"I... I have string." He supposed that was obvious. Lucky slid an idle finger over one of the many bracelets on his wrist. He showed them to her. "Do you know how to weave a friendship bracelet?"

Rein shook her head no.

"It's pretty simple." Indeed it was, if you remembered the proper steps. Of course, there were different weaving methods and Lucky had only memorized about five of them, but the first steps were clear and same for all. He rubbed a thumb over the crisscrossed threads. A sad smile.

"Well first, you think of the person. What their hair color was, what they liked, what they wore, where they lived, their traits, their eye color, their hobbies, anything, really." He noticed how her breathing suddenly hitched. This was cruel. But he'd seen how she attempted to cope, and bottling all her feelings and throwing them away wouldn't help her. They would only spring up stronger later, he knew. This method he'd brought up with the weaving had worked for him, and he hoped it would work for Red too. "Everything has a color. Likes, dislikes, personality, emotions, everything," he said, starting to tackle the mess of strings in an attempt to sort them out in rainbow order. "Just think about it for a while."

They sat, and Lucky somehow managed to untangle all the green strings from the pile. He started to move onto the purples. Rein just blinked, staring at an empty spot on the wall.

Time passed.

"She liked carnations," she said, so quietly that Lucky wasn't sure whether it was just a pigment of his imagination or not. But she went on. "Those white ones, with the blue tips. That..." Rein drew in a shaky breath. "...that you get from the little flower shop at the end of the street. And there's a pebble road and the flowers smell so sweet and... stars, you hold them in your arms—" A hiccup caught in her throat, but she continued. "And she buys them for you but steals her own little flower for tucking behind her ear because stars, that's what you do, right? When you're a thief? You- you steal. It was such a small thing, but Paku stole it from the flower shop anyway and-and...she was. She... she was! It—" Rein wiped her eyes repeatedly, never ending. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, trembling. "It was such a small, little thing. She stole...It was such... such a small thing...but..."

"She was happy," Lucky finished for her, hands clasped together. He dug his fingernails into his own skin to keep his hands from shaking before his eye caught on two colors and he started to untangle them.

She nodded, throat constricting.

Lucky selected two colors. "Like these?" he asked, handing them to her. Two strings: vivid Royal blue, Navajo white.

"Y-" Her voice cracked. "-yeah." She clutched the strings so hard her knuckles paled.

"Don't tell me you're planning on making a bracelet with just those two colors!" Lucky joked. "Come on. Pick out some others."

"Her... shoes. Ballet flats."

Lucky remembered the color. He'd seen it when he was first held under questioning. He untangled a string and handed it to Rein. "Dusty china pink."

"Her gun? She polished it every single day, and it shone, even when it was dark."

Another string. "Battleship grey."

"Her eyes—" Her own went wide and she froze once more. "I..." She bit her lip. Stars, she'd seen them up close! She hadn't closed them. They'd stared at the stars, but why? "I... I can't remember."

Watching her suffer was like experiencing a memory of his past all over again. He'd lost many close to him, and the old lump in his throat returned, not nearly as painful but aching nonetheless. Except this time, it hurt for someone else. "You don't have to remember," he stated, wishing someone had told him the same so long ago. "It's okay if you don't remember her eyes. Only the parts of them that have some meaning to you. Maybe you can tell me about her and I can give you her color?" he suggested. She didn't answer. "Come on. How about it, Red?"

A sniffle. "My name isn't... it's Rein. Like the things you use on a horse?"

He grinned gently. He briefly wanted to make a snarky remark about how he would never call anyone by their legal name but for now, he supposed that comment could wait. "I'm Lucky."

And so Rein began to talk. How Paku preferred warm weather but her favorite season was autumn because of the leaves. When not with the Troupe, she also stole little things if she wanted to. Little, small, but pretty things, like the flower, as a hobby. She liked flowers, but wasn't a fan of gardening. How one time, she had a calico cat that came and went, and helped in taking care of the little kittens that showed up months later. She was most comfortable when polishing her gun. She liked lemon herb tea, and the smell of lavender. Sometimes at night, she would stop walking just to look up, and somehow always managed to locate and name the constellations.

Rein went on and on. Between each sentence was a suppressed sob, but she held firm, continuing.

Lucky waited patiently, nodding after every memory to let her know that he was paying attention. He was there.

They sat in silence after she finished, and Lucky picked out a color.

One quick burst of a sigh. Not content, but getting there. "Lavender?"

"Orchid purple, actually," he corrected. As soon as the words slipped, he wished he'd held his tongue. Thankfully though, Rein didn't seem to mind.

She took the strands in her fingers, and rubbed it across the edge of her thumb. "Orchid purple," she repeated. A light purple. That was all it was. So little. But... "It's," her voice became strained, "Paku."

He bobbed his head, nodding. The tears weren't coming, but the red in her irises seemed to shine brighter before she lowered her head to her knees once more, calming. This was progress. Emotionally hurtful progress, he knew, but progress nonetheless. She wasn't suppressing anything anymore. "Well, you've chosen your colors," he raised his voice.  He held up a fist, showing her the threads in his own hand, of the same colors that Rein had chosen. "And I have mine. Now normally, we'd get some tape or something, but since we don't have that, we can just tie all the strings together into a knot at the top. Like this, see?"

She finally lifted her head to look but didn't meet his eyes, instead staring intently at the strings in his hand. She copied the knot quickly, and nodded for him to continue.

Lucky went on, rambling about how this string went here, while that string went there, and no, no, that string, and the Orchid purple went before the grey, not the other way around—

Only halfway through, and Lucky's bracelet was woven expertly, while Rein's just looked like a tangled mess, twisted together into a sad excuse for weaving.

It was such a small little thing. But that was Paku, and she'd messed up the bracelet, and—Rein's fingers instinctively reached for her pocket before stopping mid air. Right, her rock wasn't there. Stars, it wasn't there. It was such a small thing, hardly anything to make a big deal out of. She had the rocks Kortopi dropped off, right? Couldn't she just hold one of those, even if it wasn't the same rock? Such a small, small thing... she felt terrible when this little thing was what drove her to tears. It wasn't a big deal. It was such a small, little thing, but it was all wrong and—

"It's terrible," she whispered, and started to cry. Why did she have to do this every single time?

"Hey, Red. It's alright, your bracelet doesn't look that bad," Lucky tried to reason in an attempt to calm her down.

"But the bracelet, the bracelet..."

Lucky fell silent as her cries grew louder. No matter how many times she said it, he knew that her mess-up wasn't the reason she was crying. Sure, it had been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it wasn't the true reason.

Maybe she should take a break. "Hey, you want to know how my first bracelet weaving went?" Lucky asked the girl.

A waiting sniffle.

Lucky went on, trying to remember every little detail. He made himself laugh at the memory, and he could see Rein was paying attention. He continued, trying to copy every single moment of that incident with the most dramatic flair he could muster, waving his arms in the air for extra effect, and mimicking explosions with his lips.

In the middle of his sentence, Rein made a noise. A snort, a shaky sob, an amused grunt, and a wet and gargled hiss welded together for an abomination of a reaction. Scarlet rimmed her eyes as she lowered her head and quieted, obviously remembering something.

"Hey, don't tell me that's happened to you too."

Her shoulders shook, and just when he thought she would either burst into another set of tears or start to laugh—admittedly the former was much more possible considering the timing, but the latter was more possible considering his story—he braced himself for whatever reaction would come. She was still in mourning. It hadn't even been a day since the death, and from what he'd heard, another loved one of hers had also died pretty recently. He prepared to comfort and be there, or prepared to laugh along. More the first, if anything.

So when she blew a raspberry, Lucky blanked; straight-up could not function for the next few still moments. He paused as he was dragged out of his daze. Could it be? Lucky blew a raspberry, experimenting.

Sending him a questioning look as if she hadn't even understood what she'd done herself, Rein sent a weak one back.

Locking eyes, he blew another, just a bit louder than he had before.

Without thinking, she blew another raspberry, louder and stronger than his last one had been.

Lucky threw her a small grin before he blew another one, louder than her last. Challenging her to a contest with a glint in his eye.

It was like a rubber band snapped inside of her. Her lips slowly parted, and cheeks wrinkling with stiff dried tears, Rein found herself cracking a smile. A small smile. She looked to the challenge offered. She...

...she couldn't lose now, could she?

*     *     *

Machi listened to it all.

Leaning against the wall and hidden from their sight, she could hear them being ridiculous. Not laughing, not completely happy, but a step closer. A step none of the other Spiders had been able to take with the girl.

Machi had to admit, she had been hesitant to let Lucky near Rein. After all, how many times had they gotten in trouble in his presence? His aura was unpredictable, and the opposite of ideal. Unsafe. But, like Danchou had informed her, his aura switched in between destruction and being hardly noticeable. It seemed his aura had died down at just the right time.

When she'd heard his idea, Machi thought him stupid. None of them knew quite how to deal with a mourning child, and the only one who had a vague sense of how to do that was the one now buried in the ground. Machi had entered the room herself and tried to recall all that Paku had done, such as talking to Rein or rubbing her back. But when she sat next to Rein, Machi hadn't been able to bring up any words, and her arms locked in on themselves. She couldn't do it.

So when Lucky told her he intended to weave friendship bracelets with Rein, it seemed absurd. She couldn't trust anyone with the nature of his Nen. His method couldn't possibly work.

But it had.

More raspberries came from the room, growing more and more intense with each turn. Raspberry after raspberry after raspberry. Smiling. Machi could nearly hear Rein smiling.

Satisfied, Machi pushed off and started to walk away, leaving their childish flying spittle behind. Her feet softly padded down the hall as she went, silent to all but herself. She summoned up her threads and ranged through the color spectrum—the reds to the oranges to the yellows—until it landed on a light purple.

Orchid purple.

That Lucky, he wasn't all too bad.

I feel like I rambled on for a bit too much...

(To those suffering recently I'm also not completely sure if what Lucky did was actually good or not so forgive me if it's not for you. I didn't mean to offend you, I just projected Lucky's opinion on this specific fictional situation. I love you and wish you comfort.)

It might not mean much, but...

Lucky thinks you'll make it.
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