Heartwarming / Crossed

• The five bloody fingers "renewing their blood oath" is a peculiar mixture of heartwarming, Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel.
  • Also, it's shown in the climax of Five Bloody Fingers that Yamada really does love his daughter... despite being a massively cruel asshole to nearly everyone else.
  • The mere fact that there is a group of characters who are basically Zombie Apocalypse Survivor!versions of the Big Hero 6 that can still exist in this universe is pretty heartwarming in itself.
• There are several moments hidden through the series that aren't just HopeSpots but genuine little statements. This trope found the panel of the wolves at the end of Chapter 5 to be one of the most touching panels in comic book history.
• Cindy's revealed 'origin'. Characters spend the series wondering how she came to be so determined, knowledgeable and fierce about surviving and protecting herself and her son, even making up fancy backstories ('She's a green beret!'). The truth is far less cliché and a lot more thoughtful.
  There's nothing special about me. My grandfather taught me guns. He was old-fashioned, but he thought women ought to learn to protect themselves. I got married to an asshole because I was stupid and blind. He beat the shit out of me until I saw no one was going to stop him, so I had to do it myself. After that I had to keep running, moving on to somewhere else small and quiet. I had to teach myself the discipline for it. Not get lazy, not get comfortable, go. But that's all. That's everything there is to me. No mystery.
• Stan befriending the stray dog, especially if you consider that the domestication of dogs has been one of the first signs of human civilization.
• Stan's final summary to Cindy of what they went through; it wasn't all for nothing - because, in the face of a world of violence and depravity, they chose to value each other.
  I think... Everything we did... Everything... Was for each other. And some of us got killed, but that doesn't mean the things we did for them were wasted.
• Shaky and Sofia together watching the aurora borealis, right before the latter's suicide.
• Future telling Mustaqba that she loves him. Even though it's made a bit Narm-y because of the Future Slang in the arc's language, it's still rather touching considering the fact that it seemed like their relationship was straining because of recent events, that and the fact that this was the first time Future has directly said her love for him.
  Future: Mustaqba...
  Mustaqba: <praying> Shh..
  Future: I heart you
• The fact that Future reads "wishful fiction" (pre-Crossed science fiction and fantasy) in Crossed +100. Even after what is arguably the worst possible apocalypse, there are still people who can and do appreciate the works of JRR Tolkien, Isaac Asimov and other authors.
• An example occurs in the end of the "Dead or Alive" webcomic arc. We hear most of the story from the perspective of an Unreliable Narrator. He views the group keeping him alive as useless or worse, and acts like a parasite. In the end, his goal of staying with them only until they "outlive their usefulness", then leaving and killing as many as possible to avoid their revenge is what does him in. The survivors note that it has been their willingness to work together as a group and to support each other through weakness that has kept them alive for so long. Then, because this is a story in the Crossed franchise, they leave him with a gun to kill himself when the Crossed show up.
• The ending of "Lesser of Two Evils" seems to be building towards a full-on Downer Ending as the two girls explain to Tyree they were deliberately trying to destroy the group from within because it's what their survival guide said. With everyone else presumed dead, Tyree recognizes he's doomed... until several now-Crossed members of the group show up to the bridge and manage to get across with grappling hooks. Tyree and the girls put them down but Morgan gets blood in her mouth. While she claims to Olivia she's not infected, Tyree jumps off the bridge into the water below. Morgan turns out to be infected after all and joins the rest of the Crossed in brutalizing Olivia. The heartwarming part? Tyree manages to survive the jump and as he leaves the river he is pulled out of the water by his father, who had been presumed to have been killed much earlier by being shoved off the bridge in the beginning of Olivia and Morgan's manipulations. A surprising ray of hope from this series.
  • From that same arc, we also have the gay couple silently but firmly making it clear to each other that if one of them goes off the bridge on the supply run, then they both go off, Official Couple Craig and Sarah's last words being about each other, and Tyree counseling Dylan that his estranged father (who he'd been going to visit on C-Day) would want him to stay alive instead of taking chances.
• Smokey's relationship with the sailor in the last few issues of Badlands' final arc. Unlike the other humans who made a deal with Smokey and regretted it, the sailor actually develops a near-friendship with Smokey and is protected by him for 13 years. In the very last issue, Smokey even tells him to go north and join a survivor community, setting him free. The sailor is very grateful (for obvious reasons, he never expected to be let go) and tells Smokey that he was his best friend, even taking into account the time before the Crossed. Smokey says "Me too." Then he goes and snaps the sailor's neck. This also still counts as heartwarming when one considers that it appears to have been a Mercy Kill since Smokey knew his (more sadistic) wives were waiting in the woods. The sailor died happy and in a less brutal way than usual.
• In The Folly, the main character Isaac passes the time while he is trapped on top of the tower he has taken refuge in from the Crossed by coming up with backstories for the Crossed woman below him. One of these backstories posits her continued interest in the barn across from him is because, despite being Crossed, she retains some capacity for compassion and is hiding a young girl in there and her offering him his inhaler is an attempt to bring him to that same refuge. Of course, it's subverted when it's revealed the real reason she wanted to enter the barn.
• Throughout Wish You Were Here, Shaky has little good to say about Skip and Jackie's son Lance. But when an infected Jackie is participating in an orgy with several other Crossed while shouting out hurtful truths about Lance's parentage, with everyone helpless to Mercy Kill her due to how many armed Crossed are nearby, Shaky takes a moment to cover Lance's eyes and ears.
• Throughout Wish You Were Here, it's emphasized that Des is guilty of Parental Neglect towards his daughter Chanice, and their last scene together has Des coldly ignoring her pleas to not go on a dangerous mission. The heartwarming part comes when Des gets infected and fights the infection long enough to explain that he's been ignoring her for so long out of survivor's guilt, and then having his last words being for Shaky to tell Chanice that he loves her.
• Matthew telling Addy that he trusts her leadership in Family Values.
• Say what you will about their relationship in general, but there's something moving about Shaky lying to Aoileann that he's sure she didn't kill any of the Crossed who attacked them at the church back when she was still human, realizing how much not killing anyone personally means to her even now.
• Fleshcook stopping the Camp Casper "support" from killing themselves and their children during his invasion (although granted it isn't a completely selfless action).
• Julie refusing to skin one captured soldier alive, telling Fleshcook that being allowed to take revenge on a man who abused her is one thing but that he shouldn't expect the people he's spared to torture people they have no specific grudge against to death and he especially shouldn't expect them to enjoy it.
• The simple premise of Crossed 3D, which features a group of survivors led by a SWAT veteran still venturing into dangerous areas to save anyone who needs help and get them out into the countryside a whole two years after C-Day.
• Likewise, the US military contingent centered around the San Diego Naval Base being the only effective example of the remnant, and managing to save thousands of people trapped in their homes. True, the reinforcements from Pearl Harbor they were counting on turned out to be infected and destroyed some of their evacuation ships in the harbor, but others got out, and it's implied that still more had already left by that point. It's likely that a sizable percentage of Americans who survived the first year after C-Day made it as a direct result of their actions.
• Jackson stating why he brought the Drift Fleet to Cava: because they were good people and they needed help. It startles Shaky to realize that for all his occasionally creepy insanity, Jackson is one of the more genuinely moral characters out there.
• There are a few moments of surprising tenderness in the first issue of the bunker arc, as the characters settle in before things go downhill. One man lets a sleeping woman rest her head on his lap within the first day or two of the desperate flight to the bunker, and another panel shows a father and daughter playing cards and sporting rare smiles.
• The record for the most of these at once probably comes early on in Wish You Were Here, after Lance forgets to muffle a bell at one of the sentry posts that is left abandoned during the night. As the bell's ringing could draw Crossed, Don insists on Lance going back there to stifle it. Skip instantly protests and says that he'll go instead. Don disapproves of this, insisting it's Lance's responsibility, as Des and Death Seeker Mr. Masoud also jump to volunteer. Then, all of them are silenced by ex-soldier John insisting that he'll go, because Des, Skip and Mr. Masoud all have families, and stands firm when Don tries to persist in sending Lance out there. Before leaving, John gets a Big Damn Kiss from his secret girlfriend Roshan, to the happiness of everyone except her surprised father, even earning big grins from Rab, Des, Elisa and Skip (the first three of whom are among the characters who smile the least throughout that series). Then, once John quiets the bell there’s a lot of relief and congratulations, with Jackie and Skip having a Big Damn Kiss of their own, Rab rubbing Lance’s head and saying it was an honest mistake, Mr. Masoud giving Don a thumbs up, and Roshan's mother starting to talk to her about John. Even Don loosens up, starting to say that no harm was done, with a smile. Of course, this being a Crossed story, then they hear gunshots and John comes back with a mob of Crossed chasing him, then gets caught in the barbed wire. And even then they fight pretty hard to try and save John, with several of them risking their lives getting close enough to untie him and the others providing covering fire being careful not to fire any shots that could hit John.