fandomhigh | Summer Camp Wednesday [The Park]

Today's beautiful weather was made for sitting outside and doing craft projects, which was good, because that's what you were doing. A number of tables were set up around the park, each filled with macrame and micro macrame--which was a thing Anakin had learned this week-- supplies: cording of various colors, beads, crystals, and other bits of shiny things (though the supplies were getting depleted as the squirrels kept stealing them), and a few macrame patterns mostly for dresses and other clothing-like items.

Even more worryingly, there was a runway set out down the middle of the area, along with two chairs set aside for judges.

"Right!" Anakin said, yelling into his bullhorn again. "Today you will be working in teams under a one-hour time limit to create a piece of macrame fashionwear. It does not have to be very large--it's not going to be for any of you to wear. The dimensions are provided at your stations, and the models will be arriving shortly."

Anyone have a bad feeling about that? Good.

"This week's winners will win the highly coveted Billy the Bass singing fish--" he glanced around. "Where'd that kriffing thing get off to?" He raised his hand and the fish, propelled by its own power and shrieking Sabatoge flew in from...somewhere.

"...that was odd." He glared at the assembled crowd. "Please refrain from stealing the fish until after the winner is determined this week. Listen carefully for your name and then join your team. You will have an hour to learn how to macrame and then your models will arrive and parade down the catwalk. The winners will be determined by our fashion experts Sparkle and Brooke. Your teams are as follows:

Paris, Seivarden, and Astrid
Peter, Sabine, and Tip
Jason, Ahsoka, and Norman
Verity, Aphra, and Rosa
Bobby, Mitsutada, and Hardison
Liam, Miguel, and Uma
Hannibal, Cristina, and Rufus
Steve, Yang, and Sidon
Amaya, Kitty, and Beaker
Hera, Kanan, and Breq
Jono, Kathy, and Rey
Eliot and Ino

You may begin...now."

And a giant glowing timer that Anakin had gotten from...somewhere... began ticking down the hour.

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Sparkle sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"That's the hard one," he admitted. "Doctor Lecter made that one a dare, for me. Just challenged me to not talk shit about myself for a couple of weeks, and it... kind of became a habit."

He worried at his bottom lip with his teeth for a second.

"I don't think it's that easy," he said, finally. "Especially when you've got so much you're beating yourself up about, whether you should be or not. But... if you want a place to start, start checking yourself when you stop to say things like 'I'm stupid' and 'I'm selfish.' Don't let yourself open your mouth again until you have something good to frame it with instead. It can be, like, 'I'm smart,' like, I know you're doing school, right? I bet your grades are fucking phenominal, you're a nerd like that. Or you could even just replace 'because I'm stupid' with 'because I made a mistake, but here's what I learned from it.'"

He paused for a moment more.

"Or you could ask someone else what word goes there. Someone you trust. Someone who loves you. You want to say, 'because I'm stupid,' but if you got nothin' but the right people in your life at that moment, I bet they can come up with better."

"I do try some of that," Kathy said, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "I'm trying not to dunk on myself so much." Out loud anyway. "It's just...hard. Like training myself out of apologizing all the time."

Which she still did, more than most people, but still so much less than she had, once upon a time.

"Part of the problem is I just feel like...it was my screw up, so it doesn't seem fair asking people to help me fix it. I mean, once someone walks into hell to drag you back out of it, do you really have the right to ask for more?"

"If someone walks into hell to drag you back out of it, you don't waste that by never really letting yourself come back," Sparkle said. His tone was a little more gentle, now. "Mouse, they brought you home. They put it all on the line to get you here. I think that means that you're allowed to come back from it now, or what's it all for?"

Some of it had been for Alluka, too. In fact, in those early months, she'd been assured that that had been the whole reason certain people had gone to fetch her--because Alluka wouldn't have been okay until they did.

...But things had changed since those early months. And not everything that had been said had been truly meant. Maybe it was time to go through and figure out how much she was still punishing herself trying to appease ghosts of people lashing out in hurt--ghosts that had long since been exorcised by time.

Huh. Something to think about.

"...Don't look now, Sparkle, but I think you grew up," she said with a soft smile.

"Nah," Sparkle replied, returning that smile and reaching out a fist to chuck her softly on the arm. "But I can fake it pretty okay when I think it matters."

"Oh, so you didn't get an automatic upgrade when you turned twenty-one?" Kathy gave him her best crestfallen face. "And here, I thought that came with the whole 'legal drinking age' package."

"I mean, it does," Sparkle offered, "but all I was really given was a box of spare parts and one of those dinky pieces of bent metal they pretend is a screwdriver, there aren't even instructions. So installing the 'grown up' upgrade could take a while. I can't even find the instructions online."

"Uggghhhhhh," Kathy groaned. "Did the box at least have a picture so you know what it's supposed to look like?"

Honestly, if only adulthood were so easy.

Sparkle wrinkled his nose a little.

"Nah," he replied. "I opened it up looking, and all I really found was a selfie of Atton."

"Looking grumpy?" Kathy guessed.

"The role model I didn't know I needed," Sparkle replied with a little grin and a nod.

Summer Camp Wednesday [The Park]

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