"She likes you more than she'll ever like me." Carson's voice was calm, and he hooked his arm through hers, wiggling his fingers at her gently as he held out the roll of gauze. "Sunny has not had a pleasant life, Lia. Let's walk and I'll tell you." He turned and they left the room, Carson gently guiding his lover down the hall and toward the opened doors as she worked on his hand.<br/><br/>"Sunny's birth name was Kalisa Rodrigo. She lived south of here, far south, so far south that the language they speak changes entirely and you have to learn a whole new set of rules just to communicate clearly. Her childhood was about as okay as you'd expect it to be for anyone growing up in times like these. Up until she was about twelve. Then she was kidnapped by a prostitution caravan that was moving through the area. Six men broke into her home, used her, then shoved her into a sack and carried her away to be put in chains and sold to the highest bidder." His voice was low and calm even as he relayed the terrible events, though his eyes burned.<br/><br/>"Natya found her when she was sixteen. Nat killed the caravan masters, the guards, and anyone else in her way, then freed Lisa and the rest of the slaves. One by one, she helped each slave return to their home, or if they had no home she made sure they had somewhere safe to be. When they got to Lisa's home, they found her parents, who were far from happy to see their daughter come back, even though she had been through the kind of hell I never want to think about. As it turned out, they had sold her. Traded their only daughter to a sex slave ring for some cans of food and a pair of guns. Sunny went into the house, took up those guns, and killed them both when she found out. And then she decided to travel with Nat and become a Strider. She discarded her old name and decided on Sunny, since Natya'd taken to calling her 'my sunshine'.<br/><br/>"It's why she's so gruff. It's why she talks to me like she does. It's why she was harsh with you at first, but now she even says that you look good, and asked you to look after me so I don't make bad decisions. Sunny doesn't hate you, not one bit. She's just really, really angry, and the only way she knows how to deal with it is to swear and act out. And I, for one, am not super inclined to tell her otherwise." He'd tried, once. Sunny and he had fought and he had taken time to cool down before deciding to kick her out. If she couldn't play nice, she couldn't be part of the team. That's when Natya had taken him aside and told him the story, then shown him Sunny herself, in the middle of a panic attack that he had caused.<br/><br/>He pushed the memory aside and kissed her temple as they strolled past the dorms and mess signs, down toward where the other two branches in the hallway sat. "Either way, I don't expect you to just turn around and become her best friend. She's not easy to get along with and I know it. I just want you to know without a doubt that her cussing and her attitude is not aimed specifically at you, and if she heard you call yourself a slut like that she'd lose her mind trying to figure out how to make you understand otherwise."