Maybe she wasn’t ready either. Deep down she wasn’t sure if she eager to jump back into anything more than a friendship, or at least becoming friends again. If they were so different, like they claim to be, then it was only right they rediscover each other. Learn all the tricks, oddities, and bad qualities all over again. It was a tossup if they’d like each other but she felt it was the right direction for them, that they could make more progress towards whatever outcome this way. Of course, it would be an experiment. Echidna was prepared to be the mad scientist, see what happens when they try to find common ground together again. No expectations or strings, no real motive. It could work, she thinks, it could be what they both have been needing for a long time. Someone to lean on without anything else, to talk to when they needed it.

Echidna was not beyond it, maybe she was made for it. For a long time, she thought denying herself openness and her blunt nature was the only way to assimilate into being human. Now that that bull is over, she can say and do whatever she wants. It took a while to accept some of the worst pieces of herself but she’s come to realize there are no bad pieces, not really. You’re only as bad as you think yourself to be, you get to determine what isn’t acceptable. Her comment is genuine about not expecting more from him, it doesn’t surprise her and it doesn’t really upset her, either. Quinn wasn’t the kind of guy who you could keep fenced in, who was a good lapdog, he needed to be able to stretch. He needed open space to think and feel what he needed to, she can accept that about him as much as he accepts that she is a vicious creature.

If she expected anything out of him, it was only to feel a little and he’d shown that with his actions during their conversation. Otherwise, Echidna was pretty settled in who he was. How could she expect anything else?

Her next question is said in an off handed kind of way. If he wanted to keep it casual and be friends with her and keep a physical thing going, then she would be okay with it. Maybe they could rebuild themselves somehow, not together, but as individuals. Sometimes you just needed someone to be around, which was fine with her. Echidna could probably use a friend, too. His answer only makes her nod a little, she lets the new arrangement settle into her bones. His voice is soft and she knows that if he didn’t mean it, he wouldn’t have said it. Oddly enough, through all of this, she’s learning to believe him when he says he’s telling the truth about something.

It’s settled then, she looks over at him and gives a gentle smile. It looks lopsided, almost crooked on her face. Echidna scoots a little close to him and holds out her hand, pinky extended out towards him in a friendly gesture. We’ll pinky promise to be friends and be there for each other, she says to him and it feels really childish but she can’t help grinning at him with her pinky out in the air like that.

And sometimes do the no pants dance, she adds with a genuine laugh and she wonders what he might think about her. What does he make of this? But she’s not worried, this is how she knows she can survive and that is the only thing she cares most about.