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Aelwyn closed the front door of Mordred Manor silently behind her and stepped into the kitchen. She exhaled slowly, shaking out her wrists. She’d moved back into Mordred almost two weeks ago. The environment was… Different, somehow. As though in the time that she’d been gone, everyone had suddenly learnt how to communicate with her. She liked that.
And yet.
And yet, something still felt wrong. She often wondered if perhaps she simply wasn’t good enough at the whole ‘messily made, cobbled-together replacement/better family’ thing. If perhaps she was still waiting for Jawbone or somebody to realize that she wasn’t what they wanted—the way her parents had, her father had, and punished her for it with lightning, with pain, with her very literal death, the way she’d always known he would— and get rid of her. It was easier to pretend, it always had been, but God, she was tired of doing it. So she hadn’t bothered, and that hadn’t been enough for them, so she’d left. And now they were a bit less overweening, treated her a bit less delicately, and it was nice. It was. She didn’t have to pretend anymore.
And yet.
And yet, Aelwyn Abernant could hear the chattering, laughing pitch of voices in the living room just through the doorway. And she could not bring herself to go out there, because these people were… Well. They were something of a family now, and Aelwyn wasn’t quite sure what family meant anymore.
She knew what she was, of course, which was pretty much the same as it had always been. An abjurer. A coward.
She could hear them talking. Adaine. She could hear Adaine. “—Yeah, and I’m just like, okay, Professor Runefucker, isn’t your whole job to make us good wizards? If some of us can’t afford shit isn’t that sort of your problem? If students aren’t passing your damn classes you might get fucking fired. But noooooo it’s just ‘I expect pure silver in your filings, Miss Abernant’— bitch I can barely afford fucking iron!” Adaine’s voice raised in outrage.
Aelwyn’s lips quirked at her sister’s shouting. Adaine would never be saying all of this were Jawbone or Sandra-Lynn or Lydia here. She’d never want them to feel as though she was being ungrateful for needing things. Still, hearing Adaine vent was a complex phenomenon. Adaine had certainly railed against their parents’ rules and assorted cruelties throughout their childhoods—but never with the intention of just complaining. Never just saying things to get them off her chest, just because someone was there to hear and sympathize. Aelwyn bit the inside of her cheek. She supposed that was what sisters did, wasn’t it? Complain about their days where their parents couldn’t hear because it would be too complicated to tell them. But your sister would understand, would commiserate.
The laughing and talking continued, their words piling on each other’s as they swapped stories. Aelwyn chewed her cheek, wondering.
"I'm so jealous you two have matching unicorn scars," Fig groaned. "Like, what, it couldn't have stabbed me too so we could all match?"
"Aww, we coulda been a scar trio," Kristen said. "One big happy family of people the unicorn stabbed."
"Polygamy unicorn fuckers,” Adaine said solemnly, which shocked Aelwyn so much she slammed into the wall behind her.
Fuck.
Eyes watering as she gasped for breath at the pain lancing up her back, Aelwyn's thoughts scrambled. Adaine had never made jokes like that in her presence, at least not in the past.
It was like she'd become someone Aelwyn didn't even know. Like you ever knew her to begin with, a voice sneered. And it was right. She didn't. Hadn't. She hadn't even tried. As far as risqué jokes went, Adaine's was almost inconsequentially tame. Yet it held an undercurrent of similar and more lewd jokes, an ease of intimacy that came from humor on topics usually danced around, an ease of people who were free to discuss anything with each other, to be anything with each other.
Aelwyn's mind slipped out of these thoughts to concentrate on the girls' conversation.
“—That one?” Adaine was saying.
“Mmm,” Kristen acknowledged. “Re-attaching your own pinkie tends to give you a glowing scar, 'parently."
“Damn,” Adaine winced. “If I’d, uh, known taking your finger would do that I’d’ve left it alone.”
Kristen laughed. “Nah, s'okay. If I ever saw your dead body on the floor of a chapel in the middle of a nightmare forest I’d’ve done the same for you.”
“Uh… Thanks?”
“Anyway, what’s that one?”
“Hm?” That was Adaine again.. “Oh, um… Oh! Freshman year.” She gave a huff of laughter. “So long ago, I’d forgotten all about it.”
Aelwyn’s heart squeezed. So many scars. Adaine had so many scars, had been through so much, that she forgot some of her own pain.
“Not as fun as reattaching my own body parts, I’m afraid. We can’t all work miracles, Saint Applebees.”
They all snickered and Aelwyn heard the knocking-together of bones and rustling of clothes and seats that indicated Kristen had shoved Adaine. Perhaps they were swatting each other through their laughter, mussing hair and batting hands and whatever else it was normal people did together.
Aelwyn could taste blood between her teeth. She could have been that for Adaine. Should have been that. Why did Kristen fucking Applebees get to do that? Kristen was nobody, some ex-Helioic human girl with a too-loud mouth who had saved Adaine's life time and time again, who had been with her through hell and triumph and back into hell again.
It was too late to go into the living room now, anyway. They’d all think she’d been spying. Not that that was what she was doing. She was just… Listening. Listening as Adaine began to talk again:
“Okay, yes, I remember: this was from Ostentatia’s house—Aelwyn used my Mage Hand against me and slammed my face into the doorjamb.”
“She what?!” Fig demanded.
Aelwyn recoiled as though they were right before her. She hit the wall, harder this time, and the wind rushed from her lungs, making her cough. She struggled to hide it and still hear the others while her mind whirled. Aelwyn doubled over, wheezing slightly as she breathed. Fuck, she was weak now. Ever since the orb. But— but— she struggled to orient her thoughts. She remembered fighting Adaine. She remembered the Mage Hand. Conjuration had never been Adaine’s strongest school of magic. She’d mocked her for it during the fight, something about Mage Hand being a basic spell that, really, Adaine ought to have had a better grasp of. But she couldn’t remember what she had hit that had left a scar.
She pictured Adaine’s face, tried to focus on the scars she had, the injuries she’d sustained—the injuries you dealt her, her mind shrieked—but try as she might she couldn’t say which she had given her.
“Ohhh that’s right, you weren’t there,” Kristen was saying. “Yeah, I was on the roof pretty much certain I was about to die—“
“I can’t believe you held on for that long with such shit dex--“ Adaine snickered at the same time.
“—and I was trying to pull myself up when I hear this sickening crack and then Aelwyn goes—“
In what may have been one of the more humiliating moments of her life, Aelwyn heard Kristen give a horrific imitation of her voice: “A little bit of telekinesis, I didn’t realize we were back in grade school.”
Then they were all cackling, and a muffled beating rose into the air as though someone were thumping a pillow as she laughed. Adaine was wheezing through a watery, teary laugh as she said, “Yes! Oh my God, I’d almost forgotten that!”
Aelwyn swallowed hard. A sharp taste filled her mouth, like metal gone rusted, once-pure, once full of potential and warmth and strength and now it threatened to choke her.
She could smell something burning, like hair and skin struck by lightning, like a body flung across a clearing as that taste filled her mouth in punishment for failing again and again and again, not a good enough daughter, not a sister, a coward always, a coward.
It coated her teeth, wet, sticky, and she gagged.
Blood.
She swiped her tongue around and around in her mouth until she could swallow against the painful lump in her chest.
“Ugh, I’m out of water,” Kristen grumbled, rising to her feet. “Adaine, you want some more too?”
“Oh! If you don’t mind, that’d be nice, thank you,” said Adaine. Adaine, who was always shocked when people did the slightest of nice things for her. As though she found her very biological needs inconveniencing. Probably because she’d been raised in a place where they were, Aelwyn’s mind berated. By you by you by you.
Footsteps. Too late, Aelwyn realized, logically, Kristen was coming into the kitchen.
She flattened herself against the wall. That’s foolish, she realized. I look like an idiot. She straightened. Look busy, she thought in a panic, and pulled out her laptop and some papers as though about to get to work. Which, really, she ought to be doing—she needed to tender her resignation from Oakshield, although she hadn’t showed up in several weeks so really they probably already knew, but she really should at least send the principal a nice note. Maybe ‘hey fucker, I don't work for you anymore but don't worry I won’t tell the world your dirty secrets (yet)'.
Yes, that would do. She began the email.
Then Kristen stepped into the kitchen. Aelwyn deigned to give her the barest of a glance. She was wearing sunglasses indoors, like the try-hard she was. The whole lot of hooligans that Adaine called her friends her family her party tried too hard to be something they weren't.
Kristen held two empty glasses in hand. "Hey, Wynn," she said, because Aelwyn had hated the nickname when Kristen first used it (Winnie Winnie Wynn, Kristen had singsonged until Aelwyn used Mage Hand to cover her mouth). Now, she didn't mind so much. Not that she'd ever tell Kristen. Kristen, who held Adaine's cup in her hand, who had gotten closer to her in a year than Aelwyn had in 14. Kristen, who was loud and chaotic and foolish. Kristen, who had protected Adaine in fights she never should have been involved in. Kristen.
"Applebees," Aelwyn said, looking up as Kristen crossed the kitchen to the sink. "What are you idiots doing out there that involves being obnoxiously loud?"
Kristen snorted. "Homework."
"That certainly didn't sound like homework. Or does homework mean something different at your breeding ground for vandals masquerading as a school?"
"Do you practice your mocking remarks about Aguefort in the mirror, or is it just a natural thing a person develops as you ascend levels of Bitchiness?"
These were all things Mum and Dad said when researching schools for Adaine. But it was adventuring or Mumple. And they just got crueler as time went on. In fact, they even got worse when Adaine excelled at Aguefort. Aelwyn shrugged. "If the latter, you're certainly not anywhere near my level, Applebees. Your quips are getting worse and worse. Now answer my question."
Krisren rolled her eyes. "Okay, well. We're trying to do homework while instead we compare scar counts."
"Hrm," Aelwyn said. "Why?"
"Just for fun," Kristen shrugged as she turned on the tap and filled up one of the glasses. "Not sure how familiar you are with the concept."
Aelwyn opened her mouth and got to her feet. Adaine liked her water with more ice than liquid. She liked to eat the ice cubes. The crunch and cold helped her focus, she claimed. It would also likely break her teeth, but who was Aelwyn to advise anyone--especially Adaine--on what was healthy?
But Kristen had already set the first glass down on the counter and crossed the room to the freezer. Aelwyn’s cheeks heated as Kristen scooped ice into the cup, filling it to the top. Of course Kristen knew how Adaine took her water. Of course she did. These things that Aelwyn had tried her hardest to learn about her sister came like breath to these people, who did not need to practice loving Adaine.
Kristen glanced over her shoulder. “You want something to drink?”
“No.” Aelwyn’s voice was unnatural, distorted, cold even to herself. She cleared her throat. Her ears were ringing. The pain in her chest had worsened. “No, thank you,” she said.
Kristen shrugged and crossed the kitchen again to fill the cup with water from the tap.
“Hey, Kris!” Fig called loudly from the other room as Adaine, half-laughing and half-desperate, cried: “Nonononono shut up shut up it’s not a big deal—“
“Would you bring us some of those chocolate-covered pretzels? Adaine wants them!”
"If you don't mind! Please!" Adaine added.
Aelwyn tried to make a show of nonchalance as she closed her laptop, slipped it into her bag, put away her papers into a folder, slipped that into the bag as well.
“Your hands look full there,” she said, nodding to the two glasses Kristen held. “I doubt you can even manage those, with your clumsiness,” she added. “I’ll get the pretzels. Though I expect to be allowed to eat a few as repayment.”
Kristen snorted. “Ask Adaine,” she replied.
“Ask me whaaaat?” Adaine called from the other room. “Is that Aelwyn in there with you?”
“No, she died, it’s her ghost,” Kristen called back.
“Not her reanimated saintly body?” Adaine teased.
Kristen tossed Aelwyn a smirk. “You really think Wynn’s a saint?”
Aelwyn tasted blood. Her blood, like metal in her mouth, like it had been struck, a conductor for electricity not of her making but her own nonetheless, for when you are killed by something is it not yours in some way? When you are made by cruel hands that makes you cruel yourself. Unless you are brave enough to fight it, and Aelwyn had never been brave. She stood in the pantry, staring at the wall. She realized, numbly, she'd bitten her lip hard enough to bleed.
Aelwyn located the bag of chocolate covered pretzels and pulled it open with a rustling pop as, dimly, she registered Adaine replying: “She saved my life, didn’t she?”
The bag crinkled in Aelwyn's white-knuckled grip. Kristen stood across the room, bracing the door open with her hip as she gripped the two cups in her hands. Waiting for Aelwyn.
Aelwyn crossed into the living room slowly. Saw Adaine and Fig sitting on the couch, the latter leaning on the former's shoulder as she jotted something into her spellbook. Adaine’s hair was somewhat askew, showing a scar at the tip of her ear, another at the base of her temple, and there, the smallest one of all, a pale white scratch on her cheek. Where a doorjamb might have dug into her face.
Aelwyn popped a pretzel into her mouth and thought of all the manners and etiquette and rules her parents had drilled into her head. She thought of all the ways she was learning to love Adaine that came so easily to these people around her. She pushed the half-chewed pretzel to the side of her mouth and drawled, “As much as I see the good intention of the compliment, little sister, I must stress the point that I believe I died saving your life. That makes me a martyr."
Blood across her mouth. Blood and salt and sweetness. She swallowed.
Adaine rolled her eyes, snatching the bag of pretzels from Aelwyn’s hand. “Look at the pair of them,” she said in fake disgust to Fig. “They come back to life once or twice and now they’ve got big heads about it. Besides,” she added to Aelwyn, “a martyr’s a type of saint.”
“You really can’t let a point go, can you?” Aelwyn mocked, even though she had been the one to bring it up.
“Not when I’m right.”
“You’re stubborn, not right. There’s a difference."
“I thought you said I was the best diviner the elves have ever seen,” Adaine reminded with a smirk.
Aelwyn groaned. Adaine lorded that over her constantly. But also— “I did not say ever,” Aelwyn retorted. “I said current.”
“What is your fucking problem?” Fig demanded. “She called you a saint, and you need to be right about the fucking technical definition of the word?”
Fig still distrusted Aelwyn. Actually, that put it mildly. Fig still loathed her. After the first dinner they’d all had together in Mordred after the nightmare forest, Fig had pulled Aelwyn aside into an empty hallway. Then she’d told her if she ever so much as made Adaine mildly uncomfortable again, she’d cut her head off, burn her body in a ditch, and bring her dead soul to her house in the Bottomless Pit to torture her for the rest of time (“which will be really fucking long, cuz my girlfriend’s dad knows chronomancy”). Fig had been pleasant enough to her in mixed company, and hadn’t spoken at all to her one-on-one outside of that. She suspected this was for Adaine’s sake, who wanted, for some odd reason, for Aelwyn to feel liked. It was a feeling she had always craved, but for some reason some of it had faded of late. She was tired of all the pretense being liked came with. She wanted to just be normal, and it turned out very few people liked normal, horrible-person Aelwyn. Except—except somehow these people understood that, later.
Kristen had been the first one to stop being sickeningly sweet to her after Adaine had told them all about why Aelwyn left, but it was Fig who seemed genuinely happy to be mean to Aelwyn. And perhaps it was a sign she needed therapy (ugh, Jawbone was getting to her after all), but something about the way Fig hated her made Aelwyn feel like the world was all right. Like she wasn’t being absolved of her role in all the terrible things she’d been privy to.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to grovel upon receiving embellished compliments?” Aelwyn retorted archly.
“You’re supposed to admit you did say I was better than all the other diviners you’d met,” Adaine said with a smirk.
Aelwyn rolled her eyes. “Very well, if it gets me out of this inane conversation: yes, Adaine, while I was on the brink of death, I may have mumbled something about you being remarkably skilled.”
“Aha! So you admit I’m the best diviner, which means I’m the best period, which means I’m always right,” Adaine cheered, popping a pretzel into her mouth. Except she missed her mouth and the pretzel hit her in the eye, bounced off, and snapped into several pieces on the floor. "Ow, fuck!" Adaine hissed, clapping a hand over her face.
Kristen snickered. "Do your divinatory skills not work for pretzels?"
"You won't be saying that when I fucking portent your ass out of dying this weekend," Adaine retorted.
They jostled each other, rolling their eyes so amicably it struck something in Aelwyn, hard and sharp with a squeeze inside her chest. Like a stab with a unicorn's horn. Like her sister dying in her arms. Like lightning, like fear. "What are you doing this weekend?" she demanded.
The three stiffened, glanced at each other. Fig smirked. "Not much. Some photosyntheKIDs stuff."
Kristen and Adaine burst into startled laughter.
"Noooooo," Adaine cackled as she leaned into Fig. "Tell me Riz paid you to use it," she begged. "Eurgh, that's awful."
Kristen grinned. "Is it terrible if I say it's kinda grown on me?"
"Yes," Adaine said.
Aelwyn wished she had something to clench, because curling her fists would indicate anger, and it wasn't quite anger that she was feeling right now. It was something else entirely as she watched the inside jokes and casual laughter her sister shared with these people. The safety and comfort she derived from their company. The things she was keeping from her guardians, not out of fear but out of preoccupation for their wellbeing.
She didn't come to me, Aelwyn’s mind whispered. She didn't come to me, when she needed help.
Then she thought: She came to me to find a job.
And then she thought: That's not really the same.
Adaine sighed and flipped through her notes. “God, I’m fucking exhausted.”
“Sleep on me,” Kristen offered.
“I don’t sleep,” Adaine muttered. “I’m not supposed to fucking sleep. I’m an elf. I’m awake. I’m fucking fine.”
Kristen gently but firmly guided Adaine’s head onto her shoulder. “Go to bed.”
Fig cast a spell on Adaine that, through the ethereal plane, Aelwyn could see dissipate into nothingness as it got closer to her head. Adaine looked at Fig. “Did you just try to cast Sleep on me?”
Fig’s already-red face went even darker red. “Uhhh noooo.”
“You fucking idiot,” Adaine said affectionately, reaching across Kristen’s lap to hold Fig’s hand. She glanced at Kristen. “You have an essay to work on.”
“Go to bed,” Kristen ordered.
“Work on your essay!”
Kristen picked up several sheets of paper and sighed, looking down at them. “I have, like, sources, but I don’t know what to talk about. Yknow?”
“Give.” Kristen handed over the papers. Adaine, her body still contorted across Kristen’s lap and her right hand holding Fig’s, clenched the papers in her left hand and read them over. A few minutes later, she said, “Have you considered using Gregor’s theory of the transmutative properties of godly power to explain your shards of Cassandra?”
“Gregor’s what?”
“Kristen, did you even read these sources?”
“Yes! Well, most of them.” A beat. “Well, I read the titles and they looked useful.”
Adaine sat up, chucking her spellbook across the room into an empty armchair. Aelwyn winced as the spine of the book cracked a bit. She could only imagine what her mother, with all of her impeccable note-keeping and organized lists and methodically crafted curriculums, would say about such treatment of one’s spellbook. “Look,” Adaine said, and began explaining the first text as she and Kristen read it over together.
Arianwen had taught Upper School Advanced Conjuration Theory. She had been a masterful professor, such that even Aelwyn, who’s primary School of magic was Abjuration, had a firm enough grasp on Conjuration to fool even the most talented wizards into thinking it was her chosen field. Arianwen had been direct, clear, precise, and she had been exceptional at tailoring her lessons to each class.
Adaine had never been taught by her. But it was almost like looking into some inverted mirror: here was Arianwen, pushing her glasses up higher as she listened to her student work through an idea; here she was unraveling a particularly dense piece of text; here she was, here she was, here she was. And here she wasn’t.
Because here was Adaine, smacking Kristen’s shoulder exuberantly when she made a particularly stunning breakthrough; here was Adaine, throwing a pretzel at Kristen when she wasn’t focusing, here was Adaine’s horrific left-handed penmanship scribbling down the ideas Kristen proposed for her essay; here was Adaine working through a thesis with broad hand gestures and such aggressive page-flipping she undid the staples on one of the packets and sent the pages flying everywhere, then Mage Handed them back together. Here was Adaine, working with Kristen Applebees on a project that had nothing to do with herself, because Kristen didn’t quite understand it, and Adaine somehow did despite not knowing much about being a cleric.
Here was Adaine, leaning against Kristen while having a thumb war with Fig with her Mage Hand as she worked through Kristen’s thesis.
And Aelwyn, straight-backed and perched at the edge of the couch, had not the foggiest impression of what she was meant to do here.
"See?" Adaine said finally, an hour or more later. "That wasn't so bad."
"It was," Kristen protested. "But...Thanks."
"Anytime."
"C'mon, I'm sick of just sitting here," Kristen said.
"Y'all wanna go to Basrar's?" Fig offered.
"He still gives me an employee discount even though I don't work there," Adaine said, stretching.
"Sick."
Discounts. Minimum wage work. Gods, what would Father say about this life his daughters lived now?
Aelwyn swallowed, wondering what she should do. What she should say.
“Aelwyn, wanna come?” Adaine asked, already on her feet, Fig and Kristen halfway to the door. Adaine flicked her wrist and a Mage Hand tossed her spellbook back at her from across the room. She caught it with a coordination she’d never had--at least, not Before.
“No.” Her voice rings and rings in her ears.
“All right. Bye, Aelwyn!" Adaine called over her shoulder. And then they were gone.
And she was still there.
She stared at the wall and wondered what she did to be here. What Kristen fucking Applebees did to Adaine that she didn't. Rhetorical question, she reminded herself as her mind struck, one hit after the other: all the little slights, all the cruelties, and, oh right, trying to kill her.
Will you be my big sister? I’d really like for you to be my big sister. But regardless of what Adaine would like, it was not true. Aelwyn wasn’t her sister. She was just someone who had lived in the same house, shared the same blood, for fourteen years. That was not enough to make someone a sister. It was not enough. She was not enough.
She stared at the peeling wallpaper across the room and listened to the silence surround her like the silence after lightning strikes a tree.