Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 3

Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 3

So, what is the first thing you think about when you are more or less mandated by the government to live alone with your sister—who you recently found out has been harboring incestuous feelings for you since she discovered boys were not her thing—because the two of you are the only living humans who know how to navigate a paranormal phenomenon that seems to be a cross between Stephen King and some pretentious author whose name I’m blanking on because he’ll never be remotely as popular as Stephen King?

If you said ‘movie night,’ congratulations. You are just as clueless about this whole thing as I am.

Though I may personally be either disgusted or terrified by anyone who knew how to perfectly handle this exact situation, so, well, let’s say you’re in good company?

“The Neverending Story? Really?” Amy grouchily (as in: by default) says from the sofa.

“If you make the popcorn, I’ll let you pick the movie,” I answer from where I comfortably plop down on the yielding, apple-green cushion.

Yes, I hate it. Maybe I can arrange an ‘accident’ while mom’s away?

“Oh, please, as if staring at the microwave warranted movie-picking rights.”

“You always say the same thing, yet I never see you actually use that microwave… Anyway, what’s wrong with The Neverending Story? It was like our favorite movie ever.”

“Right. When we were nine.”

“I switched to Labyrinth when puberty really hit, but I don’t think you’d appreciate it the same way I do.”

“All right, first? It’s David Bowie; everyone is at least a bit Bowie-sexual. Second? Please, don’t remind me. There was a whole year where I couldn’t step into your room without blushing scarlet.”

“I know. That was half the fun.”

“The other half being staring at a man who very clearly wasn’t stuffing anything with a sock?”

“Right. Staring.”

I waggle my eyebrows until Amy crashes her elbow against my layered shield. Then laugh at her as she blushes while rubbing it, managing that ever so elusive combo of deathly embarrassment and grouchy surliness that’s so uniquely her.

I missed this.

My sister just being her, ribbing each other, no looming threats on the horizon getting in the way, no trauma about dead—

I take the remote and hit play.

“Right. A wonderful start to a children’s movie: a discussion about his dead mother,” Amy snarks after grabbing a handful of popcorn and aggressively munching on it.

“Kids need to learn death exists. I don’t remember this being an issue when we watched it.”

“Need I remind you, again, that we aren’t normal kids?”

“… It helped me.”

“What do you—oh.”

‘Oh’ is right. Because, well… I used to have another aunt, you know?

Aunt Fleur was… Don’t get me wrong, I love Aunt Sarah, always have, but Fleur… She was special, you know? She had this way of not quite filling the room, not being overbearing, but still adding something. You may miss it when she came in, maybe fading into the background, but you always noticed when she left, because things turned a bit dimmer, a bit less spirited, a bit less joyful.

And then… She left. For good.

And everything’s been dimmer since.

“I…” Amy fidgets, rushedly swallowing all the popcorn still in her hand. And then she throws an arm around my shoulder and drags me to her like the most unsubtle teenage boyfriend ever. Or like an awkward sister. “I didn’t realize, back then. You could have told me.”

“That I was wearing down the VHS of our favorite children’s movie to deal with… that? I was thirteen, Amy. I wasn’t mature enough to admit to being immature.”

“Oh, right, excuse me, I forgot I was talking to a ripe-old seventeen-year-old. Forgive me if my wisdom fails to reach your level,” she snarks at me. But her heart isn’t in it.

Well, as far as I can tell where her heart is nowadays. For all I know, she’s switched to a decentralized circulatory system.

“You’re an ass, you know?”

“I’m not, but I can finally give yours a run for all the money it’s bounced over the years.”

“Hey! I told you to stop throwing quarters at it!” I nudge her with my own elbow. Those coins sting.

And she laughs.

Because Fleur, as terrible as it is to even think about it, is old news, a tragedy we are already used to that brings a flash of pain and then leaves.

And… That’s the kind of life we have, isn’t it? The kind where you remember the dead, but don’t let them linger. Because otherwise the room will get too crowded.

On the screen, Bastian is hiding from his bullies in a library, giving us viewers the none-too-subtle message that books everywhere are kinda like garlic and crosses for their ilk.

I mean, not that I’ve had much trouble with bullies since they got the message it took me actual effort not to smear them across the pavement, but… Still. Not happy memories.

Ah! What’s the matter with me today? Am I trying to revisit each and every traumatic memory in my life leading up to a big reveal? This was supposed to be nostalgia and popcorn! And—

Oh. Right.

Wait for Amy to take a mouthful of popcorn and…

“So. When are you making us a Falkor?”

And she starts coughing. Victory!

Oh. She just stopped. Are those… gills?

“Gross! Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, dislodged it or something other than going full Cronenberg?”

“Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Rework his entire cardiorespiratory system, and he’ll freak out his annoying sister.”

“Oh, great, now you have a God Complex.”

“I’m not the one demanding the creation of intelligent life.”

“It’s a luck dragon. You can’t tell me you don’t want a luck dragon.”

“It would never fly, you know? Biology isn’t magic, much as it may look like it to plebs like you.”

“College. Classes.” I glare at her.

“Honorary. Doctor.” She glares back.

And we burst out laughing.

I mean, I’m objectively the smarter one because an honorary degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but the little exchange is something so engrained since we both got our respective distinctions that I…

I’m hugging her. Like always. Like I used to. Like I don’t know what’s so different from all the other times.

But.. It isn’t, is it? Not really. Not for her.

I may have just recently learned about Amy’s… attraction, but it isn’t anything new to her. She’s had to deal with my very physical displays of affection all this time, never saying anything, never telling me whether I was making her uncomfortable or… or…

Or if she wanted more.

I lean back from her shoulder, our faces right in front of each other, and I can see a passing blush that I’ll never know whether she’s consciously suppressing. And I know she wants me to lean back in, but not back to her shoulder.

For a moment, my eyes dip to lips that are a bit fuller than they were yesterday, naturally crimson without a trace of makeup.

Then I look back at hazel eyes with a jagged ring of honey that… That aren’t that different. That are still hers. Still the eyes I’ve so often looked for across a room, or watched with fond exasperation as she shot down yet another innocently unsuited suitor.

Her eyes. Amy’s eyes.

My sister’s.

Is she nearer?

Then her eyebrows shoot up, and her iris widens in that weird, cartoonish way she’s just picked up, and she leans back away from me.

“Uh… speaking of things that can’t fly…”

And that’s the most intriguing non-sequitur she’s ever said to me.

***

Amy has wings.

I feel this merits the interruption of our favorite childhood movie.

We are in the bathroom for some unfathomable reason, and part of me thinks it’s because Amy thought I may get the urge to throw up faster than she can suppress it, but the rosy-beige tiles on the wall are the worst possible background for this revelation. Far too prosaic.

Because…

Wings.

Amy has taken off her bulky shirt and now her back’s to me. Her hands are covering her breasts up, because her absolutely unfair powers make bras a thing of the past. But she doesn’t need to bother because my eyes are glued to the black protrusions unfurled behind her.

Let’s see… unearthly beautiful after getting a unique superpower granted to her by trauma and a heroic journey to the center of the heart, taboo love interest, healing powers… And wings.

Dragon-like wings.

There’s only one reasonable conclusion.

“Are you actually trying to become a Mary Sue?”

“Wha—no!”

“I swear to God, Amy, if I find out you have a LiveJournal page with gothy poetry…”

“What the hell are you even talking about?!”

“You have wings. Black wings.” I point at them, because if something deserves overly dramatic body language (that I may have practiced in front of a mirror while yelling ‘Halt, criminal scum!’) it’s this. “You’re a frilly blouse away from a vampire novel’s cover. The ones with smut.”

“All right, first? Those are your collection. Stop projecting.”

“Can’t help it. It’s my second-trigger.”

“Fucking smartass…” She glares at me over her shoulder, the gesture disturbing the cascading waves of absolutely fucking gorgeous hair nestled between black wings.

Right. Another strike on the tally. She’s only lacking heterochromia and being an albino.

Wait. Her eyes are naturally two-toned. Does that count?

I groan. It does. Of course it does.

While I facepalm, there’s a frankly weird noise, and, when I lift my eyes, she’s facing me, her wings wrapped around her chest like the most avant-garde top ever.

As long as you only buy at Hot Topic.

“I can definitely say this isn’t the reaction I was expecting,” she comments, her tone as gruff as when I swiped her Happy Meal toy.

Yes. I still remember that. The tantrum was epic in the classical sense.

Who knew she was so much into Shego—ah. Right. Of course.

Well, look who definitely doesn’t have a Thinker rating…

“If you were expecting me to go all ‘burn the witch,’ I should remind you I can do this.” And I start floating a feet above the floor tiles, which are about the same tone as the ones in the wall, but at least don’t feature vases with flowers. Ugh. The whole house is due for a few very well-placed, strategic accidents if I have my way.

“Right. Unlike me, with my non-functional wings, you can fly. Like a classical superhero. Your point?” she says.

And I grin. Because she’s so easy.

“Lighter than a duck.”

She facepalms.

“And very small rocks. And cider. And churches,” I keep going.

“Your sister just revealed to you she’s mutating her body to add extra functions, and you answer by quoting a Monty Python sketch. Nerd.”

“Says the Mary Sue.”

“Oh for… Fine!”

She closes her eyes, and a surge of pure silver washes down her hair, with a single rainbow streak  breaking up the shimmering mass. Then she opens her eyes. One is red, the other is blue.

“You want a Mary Sue?! How about this! Fucking Princess Twilight Moonshadow Iris! That good enough for—”

The interruption comes when I hug her with enough strength her reinforced ribs shift.

“Vi—Vicky? Wha—”

“Turn them back,” I whisper, not trusting my voice to do anything harsher.

“What are you—”

“Your eyes. Back. Please.”

Gentle, far too strong hands lift my face from where it’s buried in her shoulder and force me to look at her as colors swim around her iris. When it stops, the hazel and honey are back, the circle as jagged as ever.

“Why—” Her voice wavers on the syllable, and I can’t stand to wait for the sentence to finish.

“You. I don’t want you to leave.” The words rush out.

“I… We’re living together, you know? You’ll get tired of me soon enough.”

“Not what I mean.” I twist my head to the side, my strength still greater than hers, and she lets go before hugging me to her as I return my face to being buried on her, thankfully, once again brown hair.

We stand there, in this bathroom with colors I learned to hate years ago, hugging each other.

My aura’s suppressed, because…

I don’t want her to feel what I’m feeling. I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling.

“Can you tell me?” she whispers with that softness that always lies beneath the prickly exterior. Because that’s what hedgehogs are, once you get past their dilemmas: big softies.

“You… I almost saw you die, Ames, and I… Everything’s so different, you are so different, and I just want to have my sister by my side, because…” I shut up. Part of me doesn’t know how to continue. The other does.

“Because?” she asks after the silence lingers long enough that her prodding comes off as gentle.

“Because I love you,” part of me answers. But very quietly, because the other part of me doesn’t want to.

Her arms tighten around me, comforting, and I wish she was the one with the aura, the one who could surround me with feelings of love, compassion, tenderness.

But she isn’t. She’s the one who can cause those feelings, and it’s cruel of me to even think of it.

“But not like I do,” she mutters.

And part of me forces another part to remain quiet.

***

We’re back in the sofa, the distance between us carefully measured: not so close that we may touch by accident, not so distant that it seems forced.

The bowl of popcorn, already empty, is between us, and I think my psychology professor may have something to say about that.

In the screen, Bastian is pursuing his bullies while riding a dragon, which may be the single greatest act of petty revenge in all fictional history that doesn’t involve a cask of amontillado.

“How did this help you, again?” Amy asks, studiously disaffected.

And I sigh.

“The book’s different.”

“But you watched the movie.”

“I… Look, in the book? The story is actually Neverending. It’s… It has at least two readings, but the main thing is that Bastian is tasked with the reconstruction of Fantasia and he keeps doing it in the real world, keeping the stories going, and… He reconnects with his father, somehow, regaining that spark he lost after his mother’s death.”

“Asides from the spoilers—”

“I haven’t seen you read a novel in years.”

“There’s no statute of limitations. And. You. Watched. The movie.”

I stretch back on the stupid, green, corduroy sofa that will leave your cheeks stripped if you dare take a nap on it (I’m definitely accidenting it—mom isn’t coming back without a therapist’s recommendation, so the house may as well be already mine). Then I look at the ceiling.

“Artax,” I finally say.

“The horse?”

I nod.

“In the Swamps of Sadness, Atreyu can’t save Artax. The horse sinks, because once the sadness gets to you… that’s what the swamp does. It makes you sad. It swallows you. And you drown.”

“Sounds… about right.”

“It does.”

Then I take the remote and go back a couple of minutes until… Right there.

“It’s… It’s real. As real as a kid can get to… the whole thing. I remember thinking that dad had swallowed water from the swamp. For years. Thinking about finding, I don’t know, the Spring of Hope, or the Lake of Serenity, or something. But when Auntie died… I understood. Once you swallow part of the swamp, it stays with you. Forever.”

Amy looks like she’s about to comment, maybe to clumsily reassure me. I gesture for her to wait.

And I point to the screen.

Where a kid named Atreyu is riding a horse named Artax for just a few seconds. For just a glimpse of what becomes of them after Bastian’s wishes rebuild Fantasia.

“But, even after drowning in it, Artax got out.”

I stare at the screen. At that moment I got so fixated on. At that point of the story that in the book has another meaning, because everything comes back in stages as Bastian rebuilds the world and… It’s a better story. More complete, more meaningful.

But to me, these few seconds of a horse running free after drowning in sadness…

They meant everything.

“I can’t believe you’re crying over a stupid, fictional horse,” Amy says.

Her voice is raspy.

“Shut up and cuddle me, Princess Twilight Moonshadow Iris.”

A black wing rips out of Amy’s shirt, the bony segments moving with the fluidity of tentacles, and she wraps me in it before pulling me to her, the barrier of the popcorn bowl flipping over her lap, both of us in the middle of the scaliest burrito ever.

Fingers defter than they have a right to be thread down my hair, and she kisses the top of my head.

“Call me that again, and I’ll make all your food taste like mom’s kale smoothies.”

I shudder.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I say with the utmost confidence.

She totally would.

***

Night’s finally fallen over Brockton Bay, and my sulking-slash-cuddling session has come to an end.

This would be the time for the fog to dramatically rise, to invite us to explore its mysteries so that we can justify the salary the PRT has devoted to us being the local guides.

Of course, today of all days, when I desperately need the distraction, the fog remains quiet.

Which… Is something I can now feel.

I still haven’t reported it, because Piggot and Armsmaster don’t look like the kind of people who like to have to parse over pages and pages of speculation whose only foundation is the gut feeling of two teenage girls, but… I know Amy feels it as much as I do. Something of what went on in there remains.

Like the Water from the Swamp of Sadness, once you drink of it, it remains.

Forever.

Right, this is sounding creepier than it should, but… It’s like… A pull? A sound just beneath what you can easily discern that, when you listen to it, becomes music? Only the music is a song, and the singer would have made Odysseus tear the fucking mast off?

Right. Not creepy at all.

But the song’s quiet tonight, which means none of the remaining parahumans in the city (the fucking morons) will need to be rescued from almost literally themselves.

Good. Because I don’t have the same kind of insight into their personal traumas that I had on Amy, so my help may not be enough to get them through the whole process.

Speaking of Amy… Maybe I should stop floating in front of her bedroom’s door and finally do what I’ve come here to do.

So I do it.

I knock on the white, hollow piece of wood (because cheap doors are kind of a necessity with a flying, teenage Brute living in the house—sorry, mom), and wait for the answer.

Rather than the gruff ‘Yes?’ I expected, Amy opens it. Partially.

“Vicky?” she asks. Worriedly.

She’s set on throwing off my expectations, isn’t she?

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” I tell her. Because it’s only fair I return the favor.

She looks at me, her throat obviously moving with repeated nervousness.

“I… Sure. Of course.” And she steps aside.

She’s wearing short pajamas with the back ripped so her new additions can comfortably pass through.

I float into her room. Still the same. Walls bare of posters, a desk with a computer beneath the window, and little else to mark this as hers. Even the lone remaining plushie is the blue, anthropomorphic elephant I got her years ago rather than something she’s chosen by herself.

… I shouldn’t read too much into that.

“Are you still… upset?” she finally asks, as if afraid to set me off.

Given she’s one of the very few people who could survive me if I really went all out, that worry may be slightly misplaced.

“I… My boyfriend died.”

She flinches. But tries to pretend she doesn’t and lets me keep talking.

Thank you.

“I don’t know how to deal with it. Because we have experience, too much of it, and we know what to expect, what kind of lives we choose or were forced into. That… That crying session, when you held me, it helped. But I’m still upset, messed up, sad, confused.”

I hold her cheeks, hazel eyes with a jagged ring of honey staring into mine.

“I’ll probably always be. I don’t think one stops being those things; they just add other things on top. Sometimes, those things are better, sometimes they aren’t, and the pile keeps growing as long as we live. Some people have better piles than others… I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Amy, a bit confused, nods.

Thank God she’s still holding back on getting that transhuman intellect. This would be even more embarrassing if she didn’t.

“Right, sorry about that… The thing… The thing I’m trying to get at… Is that I won’t stop loving Dean just because he’s out of the picture. He was always there when I needed him, always ready to help me waddle through my own pile of trauma, and… I miss him. I miss him every day.”

She swallows, her eyes fighting not to close shut.

I float closer.

“If that Shadow had taken you, Amy… I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

And her eyes fully open, her iris once again dilating so that her pupil can expand into a pool of black that draws me in.

“So… I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I loved him, and I love you, and you love me, but the word love is so weird, so big, so small… And I’m rambling again, and—”

I lean forward and kiss her brow before I lift her up into my embrace, her eerily fluid wings wrapping us both once again.

Then I continue my little rant by whispering in her ear.

“So, I know it’s unfair, but… can you be patient? With me? Just let me hold you, sleep like we used to, and… and let me…”

I swallow, my eyes rapidly blinking because not all of us have the luxury of being able to absorb our tears at will.

“Can you be by my side until the movie ends? Until we see the little boy riding his horse?” I finish with a raspy whisper.

Amy kisses my neck, in a way a sister maybe shouldn’t, but that doesn’t make me react in any way other than a tightening of my embrace.

Then she whispers back.

“I’ll build you a damn horse if I have to.”

And the fact that this is Amy, that she may be saying this metaphorically or literally, entirely missing the point or completely sympathizing…

That’s enough for me.

For tonight, at least.