Chapter Text
Leonna's cold glare made Jimmy feel threatened like never before. He was practically shaking in his timbers. After all these years, here she was. His ex-wife and probably nemesis got to see him a lowly prisoner with great loss of money, power and his beloved daughter. A few years ago, way before he even knew Moon existed, he would have either burst out laughing or become extremely offended by this event, because he knew it could never happen.
Yet, here he was.
Porsha, on the other hand, couldn't be happier! She had been waiting for her for so long, and at last, her mother was back. Her tail wagged in content, struggling to stay glued to her seat as Leonna began to talk.
"James Arthur Crystal, stay away from my daughter!" Leonna folded her arms, eyeing him up and down as if Jimmy were an atrocious, law-breaking being. Well, technically, he was.
"Uh, L-Leonna," Jimmy stammered and fake-smiled, rather embarrassed that this was how he had to see her again. "How are ya, sweetheart?"
Leonna only grew more upset. "‘Sweetheart’? Don't you dare call me that. Just look at you now. This big businessman worth billions, now stuck in prison and trying to get his poor daughter back on his side. How petty. Now I know I made the right choice leaving you."
Jimmy's face fell. "What?"
"You actually stood there wagging your tail, waiting for me to come and marry you again?" Leonna cackled wryly. "Shame on you, Crystal."
Jimmy sat open-mouthed, squeaky noises coming out if his mouth as if he had had sll the water sucked out of hid throat.
"After I left you," Leonna continued. "I discreetly changed my name to María London and managed to get a job as an actress. Now I'm one of the most famous ones out there. You hadn't even checked twice at my pictures on movie premieres to see who I actually was, and I've done everything I can to keep you out of my life, Jimmy. And I'm not here because I want you in it again. No, you deserve to rot in jail for everything you've done. Going round belittling people, even your own wife and daughter, who you especially psychologically abused, trying to kill someone for the smallest reason -- they're all crimes you are guilty of, and crimes you will pay for by living here for a long, long time."
"No, please. I'm sorry. I was wrong, Leonna. Just bail me out, and I'll leave both of you alone. I f*cking hate it here. Please." Jimmy begged, putting both of his paws together and giving Leonna puppy dog eyes.
"No." Leonna stated firmly. "And for what it's worth, you won't be getting a cent out of me even when your sentence ends, too."
After everything he had done, he had the audacity to ask for bail...
Leonna ignored Jimmy's disappointed face and instead walked over to Porsha, grabbed her paw and pulled her off her chair gently so that she was standing by her mother's side. Leonna held her hand as if she were a child crossing the road or a fragile object, and Porsha was not complaining.
"I came back for Porsha, a very big part of my life, and someone that couldn't have me be as big a part of hers. If you had any idea just how disappointed I am in you, and how proud I am of our baby girl, Jimmy..." – Leonna's face became a tad happy for a second before returning to it's serious scowl – "...No, my baby girl, my daughter, you would be so surprised you'd go mute for a whole year."
Porsha couldn't help but attach a smile to her lips. Her mother was proud of her. She had finally gotten to hear those words from her mother.
"Dad," Porsha said, feeling a whole lot braver than when she first entered the room. "Jimmy Crystal, consider yourself casted out of both our lives."
It dawned on Jimmy that he had been outnumbered, disowned, and given a taste of his own medicine, and he looked down in defeat at the shackles around his wrists, the chains that were tied to the table, the metal that promised he was going to be trapped forever to pay his debt.
Leonna sent Jimmy one last icy, steely glare, before striding elegantly out of the room, taking her daughter with her, leaving Crystal alone forever.
It was only when the two had gotten outside the police station, and felt the warm night air sigh on their faces, did they realise just how long it had been since they saw each other in person. Over ten years. And finally they were face-to-face again. Leonna hadn't broken her promise.
"Mom..." Porsha blinked back her happy tears. Leonna smiled at her warmly. "I missed you."
"I missed you too, sunshine." Leonna spread out her arms wide, inviting Porsha to her first hug from her mother in years.
Porsha happily wrapped her arms around Leonna's neck, letting the happy tears fall to their feet freely as she embraced her mom. Leonna rubbed her back and slowly rocked her left to right.
"You were so small when you were younger. I hardly thought you'd get this tall," Leonna commented. Porsha could hear it in her voice that she was crying too. She was just as happy as well. "My little girl, all grown up."
"I was, like, what, three feet four inches when I was six?" Porsha laughed through her sobs. "And I was always telling you that when I grew up, I would create a brand of stilettos that had heels the height of the leaning tower of Pisa."
"I remember it like yesterday, sunshine." Leonna let Porsha go, and caressed her cheek with her thumb. "I'm so proud of you, baby girl. Porsha Crystal, you are my shining star."
Porsha's heart burst with pride.
"So, besides that good-for-nothing Crystal getting arrested, what else have you been up to?" Leonna asked. After being away from Porsha all these years, it was the most sensible question to ask, especially since she had missed out on so much of her life: birthdays, Christmases, even her sweet sixteen, and more.
"Well, for starters, I'm part of a theatre group," Porsha said, her tail wagging eagerly.
"Oh, lovely!" Leonna noted. "Are they anywhere around? Can I meet them?"
Porsha nodded. "Yeah. We can get a cab to the hotel were staying in for the meantime, while I tell you how we met and everything!"
"I'll listen to every word," Leonna grinned. "So, these theatre people, where are they from?"
Rosita moped back into the suite, extremely disappointed. She had just raced to the hotel's reception to ask the kind receptionist if they'd seen an arctic wolf with bluish fur go by, and according to them, they hadn't seen her that night. She was beginning to grow even more worried by the second, as were her friends, all of which had given up on looking for Porsha and were sitting together in the living room, as paranoid as heck. They had all decided to take a break so they could think about where else Porsha would be. If she hadn't been found by morning, they decided, the disappearance would go to the police.
"What did they say?" Meena asked, worriedly.
"They haven't seen her anywhere." Rosita informed and sat with them, twiddling her thumbs nervously. If the receptionist hadn't seen Porsha, who had?
"This is bad," Meena said warily. "This is very, very bad. The broken clock says everything."
"I mean, she wrote a note. She couldn't have gone that far." Nooshy reasoned. "Besides, if she doesn't want us to look for her, it probably means she's safe."
"Not all the time, Nooshy," Johnny said, trying to rub the remaining sleep out of his eyes. "Someone could've forged the note. We don't even know what Porsha's handwriting looks like. Anyone could have written that."
"Oh. Right." Nooshy sighed. "Well, maybe the aliens–"
Ash groaned in frustration and buried her head in a cushion that she had put on her lap. "For the millionth time, Nooshy, aliens don't exist!"
"Okay, okay, sorry," Nooshy apologised. "You don't have to go all aggro on me, you know."
Ash ignored her, currently too stressed to speak with anyone.
Buster was probably the most disorganised person there. He had heavy bags under his eyes from the tiny amount of sleep he had gotten that night, staring into space and blocking out any sounds from outside him. The poor koala was sipping his steaming coffee that he had earlier made for himself, the only thing that was keeping him from collapsing into a deep coma.
And, another thing, too.
Besides the alien abduction Nooshy had been obsessing over, Buster was mentally switching channels between all the things that could have happened to Porsha. She could have been sleepwalking and fell out an open window, or she had mixed bleach and ammonia and accidentally poisoned herself, or she had decided to trick everyone into a game of hide and seek and hid too well. But those were all silly explanations. You can only hide in so many places when playing hide and seek, and Porsha would've been found if she had – for whatever reason – mixed bleach with ammonia, she just wouldn't be alive.
Well, actually, there was one other thing as well.
"Do you think," Buster began, causing everyone to look at him. He bore his tired eyes into the steam drifting out of his cup of coffee. "Maybe Crystal..."
Rosita gasped. "Buster, of course not!"
"That son of a biscuit is locked away forever, Mr. Moon," Miss Crawly, who had been drinking some tea, chimed in.
"Well what other plausible explanation is there?" He asked. "Besides the aliens, which are not plausible."
"Wha–" Nooshy stammered. "Ah, I guess you're right now that I think about it properly. But Crystal isn't an answer, either."
"Well then, what is?" Buster sipped some of his coffee, slurping a bit as he did so, before continuing. "What else happened to Porsha that we can't find her and there's some broken clock in her room? Who else would take her? Who else would want revenge without taking what they actually need..."
"Now hold on there, Mr Moon," Johnny said. "We all saw wha' happened with Porsha's father. Crystal is in prison–"
"WE don't KNOW that!" Buster snapped unexpectedly, raising his voice and nearly dropping his coffee. Johnny clammed his mouth shut. Buster realised he had just shouted at his friend, all his friends, and felt bad immediately. "Oh."
Ash's stress reduced to sadness. "Buster..."
"I'm sorry, guys," Buster said, staring down at his coffee in shame. He knew he had hurt his friends. He knew he was a horrible one. "I really am. I'm trying to stay positive but, I can't help but think, what if Crystal managed to break out and–"
"Buster," Rosita patted Buster's back gently as comfort.
She became absolutely distraught when the koala looked up at her with tears in his eyes. She had never seen him that upset before, not even when his theater had gone crashing down. Rosita scooped Buster up and hugged him tight, letting him cry into her shirt.
Seeing just how devastated Buster was by his own mind terrorising him, everybody quickly realised they could help out too. Gunter joined the hug, and then Meena, Clay, Ash, until all of Buster's friends at least had a paw on him.
Nobody exactly knew or cared how long they stayed that way, a large ball of comfort for a koala, but they did know that when they let each other go, Buster looked like he was feeling a little better, and that was good.
"Buster," Rosita began softly. "Is there something you want to tell us?"
"Ja," added Gunter. "You've been, like, majorly weird eva since we totally nailed zat show."
"We know something's off, Mr. Moon," Meena chimed in.
"It's like you're shutting us out without shutting us out, and it's worrying," Ash said. "We care about you, Moon. We want you to tell us what is going on, and we want you to tell us now."
Buster knew he had to come clean at that second. His friends deserved to know the truth if they wanted it. After all, they had been with him through thick and thin, and hiding things from them, shutting them out, wasn't a good way to thank them.
"Okay," Buster said finally. "I'll tell you everything.
"Ever since Crystal got arrested – and you may have noticed this – I've just been on end all the time. I can't help but look over my shoulder every second of the day, or try to sleep and end up having a horrible nightmare, which brings me to tonight, before Porsha went missing."
"Is that why you were screaming? You were having a nightmare?" Asked Rosita.
Buster nodded his head yes. "I always get the same dream. Where you guys were performing, and during Rosita and Gunter's song, Crystal throws me off a platform like what happened back there...but, Rosita failed to save me, and I died..."
"That-that's awful," Nooshy said. She didn't know Buster as well as Johnny or his cast mates, but for the little she did know about him, he didn't deserve to dream about thay every night, or at all.
"I want to thank you guys, Rosita especially," Buster continued. "If it weren't for her facing her fear just to save me, I would have been d-d–" He struggled to say the word, afraid he would break down again, when Rosita spoke up.
"Buster, you don't need to thank me," She placed her hoof on his paw. "I was doing what was right. And it was the least I could do. You gave me my dream. You gave all of us our dreams."
"Ja!" Gunter said supportively. "Like, I couldn't sing that well, but here I am!"
Buster shot a smile at him.
"And, if it were ever necessary," Rosita added. "I would jump off that thing a million times again just to save you. And, if you want, we could all go somewhere fun before we leave Redshore so you can get your mind off of things, wherever you want to go."
Buster grinned. "I would love that, Rosita. Thank you, all of you."
"I call dibs on another group hug!" Nooshy announced.
And they did have another group hug. Buster couldn't be happier. He was so glad he had people who loved and understood him, people who were there to share his theatre dream and be his family at the same time. He would gladly elaborate the greatness of his found family to anyone and everyone who asked, because nothing would make him happier. He knew now, that with his family by his side, there was nothing to be afraid of. Sure, a big group hug didn't solve all his problems, it didn't poof Crystal out of his memory for good, but it did make it a lot easier knowing there were always people he could talk to without fear of judgement. With that, there really was nothing to be scared of.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
"Oh, hi, guys!" Porsha waved, and then looked around and noticed the strange scenario. "Um, wait, how come everybody's smooshed up in one place like that?"
"Porsha, you're okay!" Squealed Ash, and then rushed over to hug the wolf.
"I totally wasn't thinking about your abduction by aliens." Nooshy said quietly.
"Yeah, of course I'm. I just...took a walk around town for a bit." She lied. Porsha couldn't imagine how worried they had been earlier, but they didn't have to know about her visiting Crystal now. She would eventually tell them later, she promised herself.
"Oh, alright," Buster said and looked over Porsha's shoulder to the taller, older wolf behind her. "Who's that with you, though?"
"Okay, everyone, meet my mom!" Porsha gushed, stepping out of the way so everyone could take a good look at Leonna.
"Your mom? Well, nice to meet you, Mrs. Crystal!" said Buster happily. He jogged up to her and offered his paw for a handshake. "I'm Buster Moon, showman of the New Moon Theatre."
Leonna knelt down to gladly shake his hand. "Why, It's nice to meet you, Moon. No need to be so formal, dear. Please, call me Leonna. I think I've stayed a Crystal too long. Porsha has told me about you. About everyone, really."
"Only good things, I hope," Clay hissed to Ash, sending the two into giggles.
Nooshy looked Leonna up and down and noticed the resemblance between her and someone familiar. "Hang on, aren't you..."
"María London, famous actress?" Leonna finished. "Yes, that's me. I went undercover for a little while, but I used to be married to Jimmy We-Know-Who. Now I'm back to spend the time I didn't with my wonderful daughter."
Porsha grinned proudly, happy that she was being flattered. Porsha may have been changed for the better and less spoiled since her dad had been jailed, but that didn't mean she stopped loving flattery showered upon herself.
"The truth was right in front of me," Nooshy said in awe. "And I had no idea."
"Ah, well I had my ways of staying hidden," Leonna winked. "Just a thought: do you guys have footage of your last show? I would love to watch it with all of you."
And they did watch the parts of Out Of This World which were caught on camera on the living room's TV.
Leonna enjoyed all parts of it, singing along to the songs she knew (all of them), but her favourite bit, the one she would never forget and the one that she wished she had seen in person, was Porsha's part. Watching her jump up from a crater in a planet as a green alien with her bubbly, fun nature made her heart melt to bits, and Porsha was just as happy her mother could see it too.
Don't wanna live as an untold story
Rather go out in a blaze of glory
I can't hear you, I don't fear you
I'll live now, 'cause the bad die last
Dodging bullets with your broken past
Well, I can't hear you, I don't fear you now
Wrapped in your regret
What a waste of blood and sweat
Oh-oh-oh
I'm gonna taste love and pain
Gonna feel pride and shame
I'm not gonna take my time
Walkin' that tightrope line
Yes, I will love better days
Where I won't look back and say
It could have been me, it could have been me
Yeah!
As they actively watched the rest of the video, Leonna, who was sitting next to Porsha, placed her paw on hers lovingly. Porsha looked up at her. She understood the burst of happiness she was feeling.
"I love you," Leonna mouthed.
She understood.