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Well, this was… different than what he'd been expecting when Kyoko had sat him down, not long into officially dating, and told him that they needed to have a talk.

His first, immediate thought had been Oh god she's dumping me. After all, she already knew all his secrets. She knew who he was, why he'd lied, and how it all happened. She knew everything. So this talk couldn't be her coming to him, angry about one of his secrets. So she had to be dumping him.

"So, I don't know if you've noticed, but I, um, don't exactly belong in most places." She was sitting next to him on the couch, fidgeting with her fingers. "That I've been…" she gave an odd, strained little smile he didn't quite understand, "well, alienated."

Is she trying to say we don't belong together? "Kyoko…." He reached out and placed a hand over hers while he still could.

"And there's, well, there's a great - a great reason for that, actually." She swallowed hard and looked up at him. "You see, um… I wasn't exactly… born here."

A wave of relief washed over him. Okay, secrets I can handle. Maybe she's not dumping me. "Neither was I."

"No, I mean - I know this is going to sound crazy because it is crazy, but it's true, and I -"

"Breathe, princess -"

She took a deep, steadying breath, watching him like he'd leave at any moment - as if he ever could - then said, "I mean, I wasn't… exactly… born on Earth."

There was a suffocating silence, and then -

"I'm not following."

"Of course you're not!" she groaned, scrubbing her hands through her hair. "It's an insane thing to say. It's an insane thing to be."

She stopped and looked up at him, her hair sticking out from her head. It made her look like a distressed porcupine. He couldn't help but grin at her, and reached out to cup her face with one hand. "I have absolutely no clue what you're trying to say, but I promise I'm going to love you every bit as much as I do now when you explain it."

He was rewarded by her turning a fetching shade of pink, her cheek burning under his hand. Then she shook her head, unseating his palm. "It's - it's big, though."

"So were mine, and you still agreed to date me."

"I'm an alien!" she blurted.

"Like… an immigrant?"

"No, like -" she waved her hands vaguely upwards. "Like a space alien."

He pulled out his phone and squinted at the date. June 17th. "It's not April Fool's Day."

"It's not." The look on her face pulled him back to her.

"You're from space, for real?" He reached out, putting his hand on hers once again, this time to ground her.

She nodded. "For real."

"Where?" How?"

She just… shrugged. Shrugged. "I don't know. Not really." She looked away from him then, ashamed. "Mother… she…."

"Okay, c'mere." He scooped her onto his lap. "Continue."

She snuggled into him, her words coming out muffled against his chest. "Mother wasn't - wasn't from here, either. She was -" she gestured upwards again. "She came down here on a reconnaissance mission, I think," she mumbled, "and met him."

He ran a soothing hand through her hair.

"She realized the mission had been compromised and returned home. She had me, and I sort of remember things, but I was really little. When we got kicked out, I mean."

"Kicked out?"

"Because I was considered too human." She rested her head on his chest, cherishing his heartbeat. "They figured we would do better on Earth. Especially since I don't have the same abilities as most others."

"Abilities?" He felt like a parrot, but what else could he do? And no, he didn't want a cracker.

"I only have basic shapeshifting, and a little bit of… I don't know what to call them. Spirits? Grudges? Self-extensions?" She vaguely waved the hand that wasn't gripping his t-shirt, sending one of her team to pick up a pen from his coffee table. "They can do little bits here and there. Mostly when emotions run high, though, so I don't have super good control of them."

He held out his hand and watched, agape, as the pen landed in it. "Woah."

"I know you're probably freaked out, and maybe disgusted -"

"Kyoko, this is awesome." He looked down at her with a giant grin.

"What."

"Look, I know I'm probably going to have my mind explode at the implications of all of this later, but right now - this is incredible." He shifted her on his lap so he could see her face, brushing a bewildered tear off her cheek. "You know, for a long time, I thought that fate had it out for me."

"Yeah?" Poor thing was so confused. He wanted to kiss the look off her face, but he needed to say this first.

"Before I found out you felt the same, I thought for the longest time that fate was tying you to him." His grin widened at the disgust that flashed across her face. "But princess, don't you get what this means?"

"What?"

"Across species, across the galaxy, fate brought you to me." He ran his thumb tenderly over her cheek. "There are so many things that had to play out perfectly for us to wind up together - and they did."

Her form relaxed, at long last. "Kuon…"

He kissed her then, and they didn't speak for several long minutes, not until they'd wound up with her lying on top of him. He was flat on the couch and reached up to brush hair out of her face when a thought occurred to him. "Shapeshifting?"

She nodded.

"What's your true form?"

She gave him a sad, twisted little smile. "I don't know. I've looked like this so long that I don't remember. I'm not very good at it, anyway."

"Well, I like this form just fine." He tapped the end of her nose, making her smile. "I promise to love you even if you're a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple monster."

The reference flew right over her head as she pouted. "I can't do wings."

Wings. "Y'know, this does explain why you were so convinced I was a fairy. The supernatural is just natural to you."

"You're very calm about this."

"Like I said, shock. I'm going to have a meltdown at about 3:47 this morning. Until then, I'm good." He let out a shaky laugh. "Honestly, I'm just relieved you're not breaking up with me."

She pushed up against his chest and looked at him incredulously. "We've been officially dating for three days!"

"Yeah, and when is 'we need to talk' ever a good thing?" He raised an eyebrow. "Three days is enough time to decide you don't like me."

"You are being absurd, I am in love with you -" she sputtered. "Why are you focused on that when I just told you I was born in space?"

He wrapped his arms around her and tugged until she laid back down on top of him, cheeks flaming. "Prioritization, love, prioritization."

After Kuon had his scheduled breakdown later that night, he would realize that a lot of things made a lot more sense now:

One, her entire revenge scheme. Most fifteen-year-olds would have cried into their ice cream for a little bit before moving on with life. Kyoko, who was in fact built differently, had instead sworn professional vengeance.

Two, those weird, oppressive auras she could generate. He swore he'd seen her use them to immobilize people before.

Three, her obsession with getting him to eat. As she'd explained later that evening, her mother had drilled her relentlessly on human lore and needs in those early years. So it only made sense that said training would shape her worry for him and his (in her words) careless use of his flesh.

Four, and perhaps most notably, it explained the dented room his dad had told him about. Those weird spirit-things she'd mentioned were 100% responsible for the dented hotel room when she'd cooked for Dad… and also explained how they were mysteriously gone the next day.

There were more, probably, but those were the big ones.

What it didn't explain was how, across time and space, he's managed to be the person to make her feel like she finally belonged.