Archive of Our Own

You are born second. Fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds later, but who’s counting? Your mother is, of course, in between cursing your father and cooing over your brother, and your father too, counting down until he can meet you. It takes you fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds.

The nurses laugh when they say you spent that time getting angry, because when you were born, you were small and red and screaming for all you were worth. You screamed when you saw your mother. When you saw your father. But when they put you in your mother’s arms with your brother, you stopped screaming. Twins, they laugh, they’ve got their own language from the time they’re born. He touches your hand and you think, you feel, in the way of a newborn, that he is your brother and you love him.

He is the first to fall asleep each night. You lie awake in the room you share and stare at the ceiling, stare at the nightlight on his side of the room, stare at him. You lay there for what feels like hours to your racing mind until you hear your father come in from work and slip out of the room to meet him. It is well past your bedtime and your mother is asleep, but he works nights, and you like to see him before he goes to bed. He sweeps you up into his arms and asks if you want to go for a drive.

Your brother always wakes up when you open the door, and he come stumbling down the hall as well. Your father buckles you both into your car seats. Your brother is only half awake anyway when you start the drive around the neighborhood, and he’s always asleep by the end of the first lap. You aren’t sure when you fall asleep, but you know you do, because you wake up in your bedroom. You ask your brother why he always goes with you, if he’s already asleep. I’ve got your back, he says. You nod and solemnly reply that you’re watching his. Your mother laughs when she video tapes the conversation. Your father is tired, but he hides it well. Your brother is serious, even then, and you love him for it.

He is the first to be pushed down on the playground at recess, but you are a close second, when you grab the hand of the boy who pushed him and twist with all the strength in a seven year old’s body. You don’t break his wrist but it’s close, he gets a good shove against your chest in, and it takes two teachers to pull you off of him.

When the three of you stand in front of the principal, you and your brother are shoulder to shoulder, and the boy is on your other side. He is excited and brags that you’re the toughest girl he’s ever met. His parents are angry at everyone involved. Your mother is mortified. Your father thinks it’s funny. Your brother is by your side and you know you love him.

Even though everyone settles without going to court or you having to talk to anyone about a so-called “propensity for violent outbursts”, you are moved to another school, away from your brother and away from any of the kids you’ve had problems with before. You are miserable, but you don’t act out as much as you used to. At least while you’re there, no one is comparing you to your brother. No one is looking at you when it takes you fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds longer than him to finish your work.

He breaks a different boy’s nose three months later at your old school. His defense is I’ve got her back when they ask him why he did it. He tells you in secret that night that the boy had been saying “things” about you, but he refuses to tell you what exactly was said. You start to realize that he’s protecting you, though it feels an awful lot like babying. Your parents move him to your school as well. The comparisons start again. Your mother is exhausted. Your father is starting to worry. Your brother is by your side again and you tell him you love him.

He is the first to fall in love. That’s an achievement you’ll let him have. You slash the girl’s tires after he catches her cheating on him. No one can prove it was you. You confess to him that night when you sneak back in through the window into the room you share, and you tell him you’re watching his back. Your mother is at her wit’s end. Your father is silent. Your brother scolds you through his heartbreak and for a moment you think you hate him.

You are the first to enlist. He is not fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds behind you, instead only half a dozen steps, completely silent now that he’s given up on trying to convince you not to join the freaking space Marines, I mean, come on. The recruiters in the mall look at the two of you when you walk in, still dressed almost identically even though your mother gave that up ten years ago, and they smile. You are not there to be his moral support. He is there to be yours. He writes his name second.

He is sifting through college acceptance letters and you are looking at the classifieds when the news breaks. You will both be joining the Marines. You stare at each other in silence and then you storm off to your room, the room you finally don’t have to share, and slam the door, and he’s the one who has to tell your parents. He was going to go to college. You were going to work at the auto shop. You were the one who would join the Marines and get out of this town, out of this house, make your own self instead of always being his twin sister. You would swear your mother is happy to see you go. Your father purses his lips. Your brother is by your side like he always has been, and you resent him for it.

You are chosen for Project Freelancer at the same time. You go in for you interviews together. He asks if that isn’t a breach of confidentiality. The man, Price, asks if you could have any secrets, being twins. You want to snap that you do, but when you look at your brother and he looks at you, you realize that you don’t. He knows everything about you, and you know he’s not the type to keep deep dark secrets. You do your interviews together, your physical tests together, your medical examinations together.

Your armor does not exactly match his, though, which makes you laugh until you cry. You aren’t sure why it’s so funny. It’s so close to being identical. A shade and a half away. You start to realize that you will never be able to be your own person. You will always be his twin sister. You will always be one of the Dakotas. Your mother stops writing to you. Your father is sick. Your brother is a model soldier and always hovering at your shoulder and always watching you and he stops being your brother and starts being North.

He is the first to get an AI. You want to hate Theta. You want to hate North. You want to hate the whole damn project. North notices, of course he does, he is your twin. He offers to spar with you to help you vent. You nearly break your knuckles when you swing at him and Theta panics and raises his shield. He tries to get you to let him look at it, come on South, he didn’t mean to hurt you, and Theta apologizes in that stupid shaky voice, and you run because if you have to be stuck on this stupid spaceship for fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds more, you’re going to go crazy.

But you are stuck on the ship, and there is nowhere for you to run. And, even if you never realize it, you do snap.

It’s anger and it’s hatred and it’s jealousy and it’s never being able to be your own person that drives you over the edge. You aren’t sure when you started hating all of them but you realize that you do. Texas especially, solely for being the best. Washington for ruining your chances of getting an AI. Carolina because you’re not an idiot, there’s a North and a South Carolina, why doesn’t she have to share? Why are you always bound to him? Why are you always second? Why are you never better than he is?

He is the first to die. It is your fault. Your only regret is that Maine got Theta instead of you.

You know Washington. You know him better after you steal Delta from him. He would never shoot you. He still remembers you as North’s wild-child twin sister. The one North always looked after. The last family North had.

You die second. Fifteen months and forty-three seconds later.