Squad Management (Kendra/Cecil)

Kendra didn't answer for a few moments. She was trying to figure out what to say, trying to balance out her anger from their earlier fight, her anger at herself for not noticing, her worry when it came to Nadia, and what logic and reason was trying to tell her to do. It was harder than she would've thought it was to figure out what to do now.

"I thought you wanted to say it was my fault. I thought you were going to blame me." It surprises Kendra how hard it was just to say those two sentences. "I wanted things to be better for Nadia. She did a lot for me. And I thought you were going to blame everything that went wrong on me." Kendra looks away from Cecil, quietly forcing out the last part of what she wanted to say. "Like how I blamed you..."

It's quiet for a moment. Then, Cecil's face twists into a wry expression, letting out a dark laugh. "Why blame you for everything? I had a perfectly good me for that. You saying it didn't help...but I was always going to be doing it myself long past the point where you had stopped."
He sighs, and turns to keep walking. "We should get moving again. We were supposed to be shopping for Nadia, not yelling in the streets and disturbing everyone in the area."

Shaking his head, the blond starts walking, holding his tongue while he gets the words together. "...if I'm honest, I still feel like it's all my fault, but if I'm thinking about it there were probably other things that contributed too. Reasons it got this far." He shrugs, and starts to rake his fingers through his hair. "...I...don't blame you, Kendra. But I do know that things could have gotten worse easily if some of those impulses weren't reined in. The blaming, the breaking...or maybe it's not so bad and we just wake Nadia up again. Out of anything, that's what worried me - that you'd just do something and things would spiral out of control. Again."

Kendra looked a little surprised, though she felt a sense of relief, however weird that might be after hearing your friend, of sorts, admit they were blaming themselves. "You don't have to blame yourself. I mean, you're gonna, which I get, but you prevented us from being arrested, right? You were there. It was kind of mean of me to say something like that." It was an apology of sorts, though it wasn't clear.

Kendra didn't try to counter what he said. The second part of her silent apology. It was only a few moments after Cecil had finished speaking that she chose to open her mouth. "There were other things. Probably. I just hope those reasons never pop up again. And if they do, we can do something at least. And..." She paused, trying to force the words out. It was still hard for her to admit she may have been too impulsive and may have nearly made things more drastic through her lack of thought. "I'll try not to act on impulse, okay? But you have to be there for Nadia more. I know you probably wanna anyways, and will, but this way I have permission to come yell at you if you don't."

Inappropriate as it might be in some ways, Cecil couldn't help but snicker a little. "Weird to hear someone say that. Try saying that to Nadia or Tomomi, and I don't doubt I'd get some opposition to blaming myself like that. That someone would just accept it's gonna happen anyway instead taking up stances against that..." He gives Kendra a half shrug. "I appreciate what you're saying, alright? More than just the reassurances."

He looks over to her, and gives her a solid nod. "Sounds good to me. I'll keep up my side, you keep up yours, and we'll both try and make sure nothing like this ever happens again." He smiles a little. "Make sure to make it big and noisy if I drop the ball. I think you've seen already how oblivious I can be sometimes."

Kendra shrugged a little. "You don't just stop blaming yourself for something like that. You're gonna do that, like, for... a good month or so. Not much you can do about it, right? I mean, like, you can tell yourself you're not gonna I guess." She was genuinely surprised, and more than a little relieved, to hear Cecil admit he appreciated what she said. "I'm glad you appreciate hearing it."

She grinned a little hearing Cecil's agreement. "Good. Nothing like this will ever happen. Ever. Not even one stage of it. And if you mess up, they're going to be able to hear me across the whole world!!" She she straight-up smiling brightly now, though she suddenly realized how odd this whole conversation seemed to anybody who was around. "We probably should go and actually get the groceries. The sad box needs to be a fridge, and Nadia needs to be healthier. Do you genuinely have any ideas for what we could use right now, or am I going to have to do everything?" She was teasing him, though she did want him to at least think of something.

Cecil shrugs again. "Don't get me wrong, it's nice that people are so dedicated to trying to make me feel better about it...but you do kind of have to own up to things sometimes. Better to be able to work through it than feel guilty about feeling guilty about it."

He chuckles and shakes his head as well. "Pretty sure I asked you to get an idea of what we needed, Kendra." After a moment's thought to himself, he checks the time on his phone and starts texting. "I'll just ask Dad. They'll know better about that than me. Can probably teach her a couple things next time she comes over and ends up cooking with him..."

"Yep. If you don't ever admit what you did was wrong, then you won't ever be able to work it out! Feeling guilty about feeling guilty about it is really dumb, but it happens to everybody because nobody wants people to feel bad, so they make it worse. Time is the real key!" Kendra would never admit it, but she usually never let herself have time to get rid of guilt. No, she ignored it, letting it fester. Cecil didn't need to know, however, so he wasn't going to.

She suddenly looked a little irritated, and very determined, putting her hands on her hips. "Hey! I know what to do! I was just asking to see if you were going to be more active with this! I'm not gonna wait long for your dad to respond! She took off, not waiting for Cecil to even respond to her. "Come on, try to catch up!"

"Yeah." He nods, and chuckles a little. "Give things enough time, and they'll subside...eventually." Unless you were him, and prone to wallowing in it to eternity and beyond, but thankfully he now had more people that could and would do their best to pull him out of that idiocy. "Meantime, still have to keep going anyway. Have to still try and keep things together."

He sniggers a little at Kendra's reaction, only for his eyes to widen as Kendra suddenly takes off. "Hey, wait - do you even know where you're going?!" He chases off after her, thankfully that he was at least fitter for some of his obsessive behaviour.
Goddammit - how was someone so short so fast?!