Chapter Text
Kristen cocooned herself in her blanket, pretending she didn’t hear Fig come into their room so Fig wouldn’t see her face, which was pretty obviously tearstained.
“Are you sleeping?” Fig whispered, hand hovering over the light switch.
“No.” Kristen said, and her voice sounded so snotty she could have been an ooze elemental.
There was a pause, and the overhead light didn’t flick on. Instead Fig moved over to her bed and turned on her bedside lamp, emanating a slight glow across the room (it, too, had been affected by her parent’s divorce- a thick layer of black fabric paint covered the lamp).
“Are you…ok?” Fig asked, sounding doubtful of herself even as she asked. Kristen would have bet her life savings that Fig was avoiding eye contact even as Kristen huddled under the blanket.
“I’m fine.” Kristen lied.
Nevertheless, Fig crossed over the halfway line in their room and sat on Kristen’s mattress to scroll on her phone, squashing Kristen’s feet a little bit as she settled herself across the short side, ankles still hanging over the edge.
Kristen didn’t protest or wiggle away, glad for the proximity, even if it was going to cut off her circulation.
Fig sat there silently, scrolling on her phone and occasionally snorting a laugh.
It felt oddly sisterly, Kristen thought. She had always kind of wanted a sister, even though she’d never been good at girl talk, she had always thought other girls her age were kind of intimidating (that probably should have been a sign).
“Lola sent me a new merch design for the Sig Figs. Whaddya think?” Fig asked, shoving her phone over to Kristen and then lying down, legs still firmly on the ground as the twin size mattress could really only fit one comfortably.
Kristen extended her arm out from under her comforter to grab the phone, which was open to a picture of an unreadable t-shirt design.
“Is this in Infernal?” She asked, handing it back to Fig.
“No, it’s in common. It says ‘burn towns get money’. You know, like our song.” Fig said, scrutinizing the design more closely. “Can you not read it?”
Kristen gestured for Fig to place the phone in her hand and re-examined it, turning the phone sideways and upside-down.
“Nope.”
Fig groaned, dramatically flopping her arms out to her sides and whacking the wall lightly.
“I’ll tell her to trash it. I guess we’ll start over.”
“Maybe it’s just me, though.” Kristen suggested, wiping her face and emerging from under her blanket. Her eyes were still a bit red, but Fig didn’t comment on it. “Ask Adaine what she thinks.”
Fig knocked on the wall behind her, which was adjacent to Adaine’s bedroom. There was a hole in the drywall that they sometimes passed notes through, mostly at the beginning of the summer for the novelty of it, but that wasn’t particularly timely.
There was a slightly muffled “Yeah?” a moment later.
“Come look at this.” Fig said with her face to the hole in the wall (suspiciously close to where a hole might be if one kicked their bedroom wall while wearing platform boots).
Adaine peeked into their room a second later, staying just outside the threshold of the room. “Did you find a clue?”
“You sound like Riz.” Kristen said, smiling slightly.
“The Ball.” Fig corrected in her very best Fabian impression, absolutely nailing the way he drawled over some words.
“Detective Gukgak said she’d prefer for us to call him Riz.” Adaine corrected, taking one step into the bedroom and crossing her arms over her chest protectively. Kristen wondered if Aelwyn had ever let Adaine come into her room.
She had always let Bucky, Bricker, and Cork into her room, even though they made a mess. It was nice to have background noise while she worked on homework and they doodled on the floor.
Fig waved her further into the room, grabbing her phone from Kristen to extend it to Adaine.
“Lola sent me a new Sig Figs shirt design.” She said, leaving out the bit about unreadability to get an unbiased opinion.
Adaine squinted at the design. “Is this in Infernal?”
“You just heard Kristen say that.” Fig said, pointing a finger accusatorily.
“I did not.” Adaine protested. “It’s got the infernal runes all around the sides of the design, look!”
She came and settled herself on the mattress, pointing out the infernal runes on the shirt (which did not spell anything, as a matter of fact).
“You’re sitting on my hand.” Fig complained.
“Just scootch.” Kristen said, not wanting them to scatter to their various parts of the house.
“Fine.” With a slight rearranging of limbs everybody seemed to be happy.
“What does scootch mean anyways?” Adaine asked, turning so she could see Kristen.
From there the conversation devolved quickly from vernacular differences to the weird dishware that Adaine’s family kept in a cabinet that may or may not have been cursed.
Adaine talked about her family with a rueful smile on her face, like it didn’t bother her to think of them at all. Kristen supposed she hadn’t had so much of a choice, leaving her home. And they hadn’t been all that great to begin with.
“They didn’t even let the unseen servants touch it, which is silly, because they’re not real people- ” Adaine continued.
“What were they even for? My family has-” (had?) “just one set of dishes, and that’s always worked.” Kristen interrupted. Her mom had never been too big on manners, and she knew it bothered Adaine, but she also thought her friend could stand to loosen up a little bit.
“That’s because your family is normal.” Adaine asserted.
They were, kind of? Tracker said her parents said some really weird and fucked up things, and she shouldn’t listen to them. Kristen said that they were mostly good people. Just a little misguided.
“They were in a corn-themed cult.” Fig said with a smirk. “If that’s not weird I don’t know what is.”
“It wasn’t a theme-” Kristen added before cutting herself off. She had to stop defending them. It was kind of a knee-jerk reaction.
“You wouldn’t know, your dad is literally a demon.” Adaine retorted, skipping right over the corn theme track of the conversation.
Kristen had the feeling that they had abruptly switched from a lighthearted conversation about family differences to something a little bit more mean spirited. She supposed that if Adaine was trying to assimilate into the family, she didn’t really have anything to model a sisterly relationship on besides Aelwyn, who was most frequently referred to as “my bitch sister”, which wasn’t entirely untrue from what Kristen had seen.
“I thought Gilear was my real dad for a long time though, so I know what it’s like to think you’re normal.” Fig said, putting that little edge of steel in her voice that said ‘I just said something personal but you can’t use it against me because I’ve already come to terms with it’.
“Right. Sorry.” Adaine said, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap.
Back to how it had been, then.
They kept trying to figure out how this all would work with the three of them living together, but sisters didn’t really seem to work (none of them had ever had a good one before) and friends was kind of weird considering they had been living together for months.
Usually friends didn’t have months long sleepovers while they waited for their parents to change their minds about loving them.
Jawbone would say she should reframe that, but it didn’t really feel honest.
It was easier with Tracker- they were girlfriends, and it was that simple. Sure, it was kind of weird to live with your girlfriend’s uncle and his girlfriend, but it was a lot easier to comprehend than whatever they actually had going on.
When Riz and Gorgug and Fabian came over for dinner every once in a while, that was especially easy. They were an adventuring party, and it was ok that they felt like siblings to Kristen, because that was normal.
Fig got up and went back to her own bed to stew for a while, and Adaine got up a minute later, throwing a guilty glance at Kristen before heading back to her own room.
Against her better judgment, Kristen grabbed her phone from where it had been charging and opened it to the camera roll. At first it was mostly pictures of herself with the bad kids, candids of Tracker, and various close up shots of Baxter, who was kind of like a family dog in Kristen’s opinion.
Then she got to the middle of freshman year. A few screenshotted bits of text from her online bible service (She had to remember to cancel that one of these days. Not today, though. You had to call in and she didn’t want to bother late at night), and then her bedroom.
Floral curtains and a green bedspread, eclectic decorations scattered all over the floor and dressers. A few dolls that she felt childish bringing with on a high shelf.
She really, really wanted to be home right now.
A little voice in the back of her head told her that it was just a few blocks over, she could really visit if she wanted to. She wouldn’t even have to talk to her parents if she didn’t want to, she could just grab a few things from her bedroom.
She had gotten pretty good at climbing in and out of her bedroom window in the beginning of their freshman year. Her parents were ok with her staying up late for youth conferences, but not so much for doing snuff in some weird guy’s house.
It had been nice, coming home from a long night of adventuring to your own bed. The pillow you’ve had since you were eight, and the sleep shirts that used to be your mom’s.
Kristen didn’t particularly want to go alone, but Fig might laugh at her and Adaine would almost certainly tell her what a bad idea it was to break into her family’s home while they were all sleeping.
Tracker was still out, and besides, she didn’t really want Tracker to meet her parents.
Kristen bit her lip. Praying to Yes? wouldn’t really provide a solid answer, so she just had to choose.
From downstairs she could hear the television turn on, as Sandralynn and Jawbone turned on their nightly show- the Real Housewives of Bastion City. They probably wouldn’t hear if she snuck out. She didn’t think they could be too good at it considering how often Fig was out and about at night.
She could do this. It wouldn’t even be a big deal, she just had to climb in, grab some of her stuff that she had been missing for the past few months, and then get out!
Climbing out the window probably wouldn’t be the faster way to go, but it seemed the safest option at the moment.
As soon as she opened the window, prying it open slowly so it wouldn’t alert Sandralynn or Jawbone to her absence, Fig appeared at her side.
“Where are you going?” She whisper-shouted, despite being only several inches from Kristen’s face.
“I don’t know, out?” Kristen responded more quietly, hoping Fig would catch her drift.
“Can I come with?” Fig responded in the same tone, already grinning.
“You probably don’t want to anyways.” Kristen brushed her off, getting one leg up on the windowsill. Incredibly conveniently, there was a tree just outside of Fig’s window.
“I won’t know if you don’t tell me.”
“I’m just going to my parent’s house.” Kristen said, avoiding Fig’s gaze by looking out the window for a branch to step onto.
“Cool! Are we going to fuck shit up, or just reminisce?” Fig asked, helping Kristen up and out.
“I just want to grab some stuff that I miss.” Kristen said, already standing on a branch. Fig was angry on her part with her parents, and even though she knew it was meant to make her feel better, it really didn’t. It made her feel like she had sold some false version of her family to this new one.
“Nice.” Fig swung out of the window with practiced ease, and they both pretended they didn’t notice Fig’s horns clunk against the windowsill. As far as Kristen knew, they would grow until Fig was in her mid-twenties, so right now she was in a constant state of re-adjusting to their length.
Despite not inviting Fig with, or even alluding to the fact that she might be welcome, Kristen was glad for her company, and not just because Fig had told her about the squeaky branch that might fall.
They walked in near silence, enjoying the night air. Elmville was small enough that the light pollution wasn’t too bad, and you could see the stars in the sky. Kristen didn’t know any constellations, but she liked the look of them anyways.
It wasn’t long before they came to the Applebees residence: a ranch style home in a warm yellow, a little bit bigger than the Faeth house. Everything looked just like she remembered it.
To be fair, they had to pass by almost every time they went into town for errands, so it hadn’t been too long.
Kristen’s bedroom was at the end of the hallway, and she knew her parent’s had never locked the windows. Plus, she had thieves tools if she needed them.
Still, she hesitated on the street for a moment, looking at her childhood home with all of the lights off. She wondered if they were happier without her here, if she was waiting for nothing. Tracker said she shouldn’t wait at all, she just needed to get on with her life, and not let them weigh her down. But it felt like a betrayal to shove everything they had done for her under the rug for the sake of a few bad political beliefs. And a few religious ones.
“Ready to go?” Fig asked from beside her.
“Yeah.” Kristen took a deep breath and walked onto the front lawn, ducking where she knew the motion activated lights were.
Her window was, in fact, open. It slid up without a hitch, and Fig gave her a hand hiking her foot up to get in. As soon as she got in (fairly silently, she thought), she turned and gave Fig a hand up.
Fig’s entrance was not so graceful, her combat boots made a loud thump when she landed on the other side. Kristen froze for a second, but didn’t hear any shifting from the rest of the house.
The room was too dark to tell whether or not they had rearranged things while she had been gone, but when Kristen started poking around, everything seemed just as she had left it. Her mom had maybe folded the clothes she hadn’t already grabbed while she was occasionally staying at Strongtower Luxury Apartments, but other than that it seems all as normal.
She sat down on her bed as she watched Fig look through the titles on her shelf. She didn’t need to, she knew it was mostly Helioic stuff.
She’d only been sitting down a minute when the door slammed open so hard it hit the wall, and the light flicked on. Her dad had his staff extended, and she could feel Zone of Truth take effect as he yelled “Who in the dickens are you?”