Lilia Calderu had always been a kind soul.
She was, sure, headstrong and opinionated and maybe–just maybe–a little too smart for her own good, but she was generous all the same.
Too generous, even.
Hence why she had adopted an 11-year-old child only because she had found her all alone in a park one day, sitting on a bench just watching the other children run around and scream happily.
"Why are you alone, sweetheart?" She had asked, chest tight for some reason as if the kid's big, sad, puppy dog brown eyes were pulling directly at her heartstrings.
The girl had merely shrugged, not really looking at her, but not looking at the rest of the kids either.
Her face didn't really showed any expression, but Lilia studied her a little bit more. How her shoulders sagged, like carrying the weight of the world. How her arms would fidget, her fingers twitch.
She looked so... Lost. Like her soul had been taken out of her chest leaving a wound that, while not open, had never had the chance to properly heal.
"What's your name?" Lilia pressed. She didn't quite know why was she so worried, but she had always been intuitive, puedes herself un being some kind of divination witch in another universe. She had this need to pry, to talk, to help this kid. Like something good would come out of it. Something important, something life-changing
Finally, the little one held her head up to look at her. Muttering a little "Rio", that resonated with the cutest accent she had ever heard, r rolling out of her tongue adorably.
"where are your parents, baby? Are you here all alone?" Rio, still with a neutral expression, pointedly, ignored her first question, shaking her head and then nodding in the direction of a group of adults who were close by, and shared the same cream-colored shirts. The ones with something embroidered on the back that made the older woman squint her eyes at, until she had been able to read it.
West View Orphanage, helping one kid at a time.
Her heart sank, and this need to protect the brown-eyed kid, as if her very own soul were calling to her, screaming for help, blossomed in her chest.
So, taking a deep breath, she simply SAT next to her and said "Well, I think we're going to be great Friends".
Rio had been put into her care not much after that.
So yes, Lilia had always considered herself kind. Had always been generous.
...and maybe that's why she had, 2 years later, taken in a 14-year-old angsty teen who had run away from an abusive mother.
While her Rio had been a kind soul from the start, with the weirdest fun personality and a love for making people squirm, Agatha had been pure wit and practiced charm, with a strong tendency to lash out and cut through anything or anyone, leaving them bleed to death.
While Rio had been withdrawn and calm at the start, Agatha had been pure fire, challenging Lilia to no end.
While Rio had been a hurt puppy who she had to teach to open herself to humans again, Agatha had been a feral cat, biting at the hand that fed her without noticing that, while doing so, her fangs were hurting herself in the process.
They had hated each other from the moment they had met, had given each other–and their caretaker–the hardest years imaginable.
Lilia knew they were bound to fall in love sooner or later.
So now, almost 15 years after her oldest arrival, with the gray-haired woman visiting the kids she had nurtured to growth, she wasn't surprised by what she was seeing at all.
Agatha didn't really told anyone that she loved them often, but her actions often shone with the fact, and Lilia had felt it eating her favorite dinner cooked by her wavy-haired child, while sitting on a chair bought only for her in a house that wasn't even hers.
And she, definitely, was feeling it, at the moment, but not exactly directed to her.
The couple had been sharing a couch, with Lilia helping herself to her rocking chair, just after having dinner together in their home.
Rio, ever the needy one, had been leaning against her wife while the three of them talked about anything and everything. As if time hadn't passed and they were still teens living with the kind woman who was putting up with them. She had been listening, she swore she was.
But... The sofa was so comfortable, her wife's thighs so enticing that she, slowly, ended up kicking her legs up and resting her head in Agatha's lap.
And she would have, actually, been able to listen to the rest of the conversation if it weren't for the feeling of fingers combing through her hair.
Lilia watched as she fell asleep in minutes, her heart warming.
She watched as Agatha, who never shut up, simply kept talking and stroking her head, as who pets a small, sleeping puppy.
She had not once regretted her decision to take them in, and after being witness time and time again of the love they shared, the one she was included in, by women who she had the luck to be called "mom" by...
...she realized her life could not have been better any other way. And that she was, at this moment, as full of love and happiness as she could be.